Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz was an award-winning American poet and author of fiction for adults, young adults and children. Born in Old Picacho, New Mexico, he received an American Book Award for his poetry collection Calendar of Dust and became the first Latino writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, for Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club. His acclaimed young-adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe received a Printz Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, the Stonewall Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award, and was adapted for film. A former Wallace E. Stegner Fellow, Sáenz taught creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso for many years and served as department chair before retiring in 2016.