Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz was an American poet, novelist and author of books for children and young adults, born in Old Picacho, New Mexico, and raised on a small farm near Mesilla.

He studied for the priesthood, was ordained in 1981 and left the ministry a few years later, then took an MA in creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he later taught in the bilingual MFA program. His first collection, Calendar of Dust (1991), won an American Book Award.

He is best known for the young adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012), which won the Pura Belpré Award and the Stonewall Book Award and was a Printz Honor book, and its sequel, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (2021).

In 2013 he became the first Latino writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for the story collection Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. Much of his work is set on the border around El Paso, where he lived. He died in El Paso on July 28, 2026, aged 71.