Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born August 16, 1954, in Old Picacho, New Mexico) is a Mexican-American author, poet, and educator whose work spans literary fiction, poetry, and young adult literature. He grew up in a small New Mexican border community and was educated at the University of Louvain in Belgium and at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he later joined the faculty. He is a professor of creative writing at UTEP and a leading figure in Chicano/Latino literature. Sáenz has published numerous collections of poetry, including Calendar of Dust (1991), which won the American Book Award. His adult fiction includes Carry Me Like Water (1995) and The House of Forgetting (1997). He is best known among younger readers for his young adult novels, particularly Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012), which won the Pura Belpré Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Newbery Honor. The novel tells the story of two Mexican-American teenage boys in 1980s El Paso and has become a touchstone work in LGBTQ+ young adult literature. The sequel, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, was published in 2021. A film adaptation of the first novel was released in 2023. Sáenz's writing is celebrated for its poetic prose, its sensitive portrayal of Chicano identity and queer experience, and its exploration of the emotional inner lives of young people navigating difficult circumstances.