Benjamin Alire Sáenz
| Benjamin Alire Sáenz | |
|---|---|
Sáenz at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
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| Born |
August 16, 1954 Doña Ana County, New Mexico, USA |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | Chicano |
| Period | 1990s-present |
| Genre | Novels, short stories, poetry, young adult literature |
| Subject | Hispanic and Latino American culture, LGBT |
| Notable works | Carry Me Like Water, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club |
| Notable awards |
American Book Award (1992) PEN/Faulkner Award (2013) |
| Website | |
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Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born August 16, 1954) is an American poet, novelist and writer of children's books.
He was born at Old Picacho in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado, where he received a BA degree in humanities and philosophy in 1977. He studied theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.
In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an MA degree in creative writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American literature. A year later, he was awarded a Stegner Fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the PhD program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his PhD, he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.
His first novel, Carry Me Like Water was a saga that brought together the Victorian novel and the Latin American tradition of magic realism, and received much critical attention.
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