Benjamin Alire Sáenz, a farmboy, priest, teacher, poet, novelist, and artist "whose complex life and acclaimed work have been widely recognized," died July 28 at age 71, El Paso Matters reported. Sáenz's works include the PEN/Faulkner-winning Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club and the bestselling Aristotle and Dante novels.
Born in Old Picacho, N.Mex., a small farming community near Las Cruces, Sáenz drew from his life for his writing. "It is my stubborn heart that's made me the writer that I have become. There was no Plan B. I was going to become a writer," he said in a TEDx Talk in El Paso in 2023.
"What Ben did that nobody else could get away with is be bold enough to be sentimental, to write heartbreaking things that some people might think are too emotional," said author and friend Daniel Chacón, who is chairman of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. "That's what he did best."
In 1972, Sáenz earned a bachelor's in humanities and philosophy at the St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. He later studied theology at the University of Louvain in Belgium before entering the Catholic priesthood, serving in El Paso for three years before leaving his order.
"Ben was irrepressibly hopeful of the human spirit," said Ruben Garcia, a friend and founder of the Annunciation House network of migrant shelters in El Paso. "That was non-negotiable for him--the human spirit--and he was incredibly protective about that."
After leaving the priesthood, Sáenz returned to school, earning a master's in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and then joined the faculty there, teaching creative writing and serving as chair of the department while publishing poetry and fiction. He retired from the university in 2016.
In the 1990s, Sáenz published his debut poetry collection, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award; Carry Me Like Water, a novel that won the Southwest Book Award; and The House of Forgetting. He also wrote several children's books, including The Dog Who Loved Tortillas, A Gift From Papa Diego, and in 2006 the YA novel Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood.
His two most prominent books were published in 2012, El Paso Matters noted: "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a young adult novel set in El Paso in the 1980s, centers on two Mexican-American teenage boys who become friends and fall in love. His collection of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, is set in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and the bar at the foot of the international bridge that connects the two cities." In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the book, published by Cinco Puntos Press, won a Lambda Literary Award and a Stonewall Honor.
The Texas Institute of Letters honored Sáenz with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. The organization's current president, Chris Barton, said Sáenz is "one of (Texas') most significant writers.... In 2009, TIL inducted a poet, a children's book author, a terrific author of fiction, and a mentor and teacher to a lot of Texas writers. And that was all one person."
Sáenz published Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, a sequel to the earlier novel, in 2021. It was adapted into an independent film in 2023. On September 29, two new books will be released: When the World Was Happy (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers) and Grandma Fina's Wonderful Umbrella, illustrated by Raúl the Third, with color by Elaine Bay (HarperCollins).
Susie Byrd, whose parents published numerous Sáenz books at Cinco Puntos Press, said El Paso was the primary character in his work: "He just loves this place so much, and that's so present in everything he writes about. He loves the people, he loves the geography, he loves the complexity, and he wants everybody else to love it. And he's determined to make you see what's beautiful and important about this place."
