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Benjamin Alire Sáenz, an El Paso, Texas, author and artist, has died at the age of 71 following a long illness.
Sáenz wrote across age categories and earned numerous awards for his work. Sáenz’s novel Carry Me Like Water and poetry collection Dark and Perfect Angels received Southwest Book Awards in 1996, and he won the PEN/Faulkner Book Award for Fiction in 2013 with his book Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, a short story collection. He was the first Latino to win the honor.
Sáenz saw his young adult literature earn several accolades, too, including a Printz Honor, Pura Belpré Award, and a Stonewall Book Award in 2013 for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. That book was adapted into a film in 2023 and translated into 25 languages.
Sáenz was born in New Mexico to a large family, and he went on to earn a degree from St. Thomas Seminary in Colorado. He then studied theology, entering the Catholic priesthood in El Paso for several years before stepping away. Sáenz went on to earn a master’s degree in creative writing. Much of his work explored the borderlands, and he built a long-term relationship with El Paso publisher Cinco Puntos Press.
Sáenz’s personal life was at times complicated. At times, he struggled with addiction and alcohol abuse, engaging in therapy several times to work through the difficulties. He attributed many of his challenges to his young life, when a family member sexually abused him. He cited this as part of why he elected to leave the priesthood, even though his faith was never in question.
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Several of Sáenz’s books explore queerness. He talked about how writing helped him find solace in his own queer identity–after being married to his wife for 15 years, he came out as gay at the age of 54. He credited therapy for helping him understand this about himself.
In an interview with NPR about Aristotle and Dante, Sáenz talked about how writing the book was a cathartic experience for him:
“I think I needed to write this book because I had such difficulties coming to terms with my own sexuality,” he says. Saenz’s coming out happened much later in life, when he was 54. “I was abused as a boy, and the thought of being with a man was not very appealing, to say the least.”
But one of his friends saw this book as a way for Saenz to come to terms with this identity, he says. “After she read it, she said, ‘Ben, you gave yourself a gift.’ “
He noted a particular kinship with Ari, especially when it came to fearing for his own life.
“He’s the guy that once he discovers what the truth is, he doesn’t run from it,” Sáenz said in an interview with El Paso Inc. “Once he discovers that he loves Dante, that becomes one of the truths of his life. He’s not going to run from it. He’s going to live it.”
Sáenz not only wrote books. He was also an artist, dabbling in painting and photography.
In 2020, Sáenz earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His final book, a young adult novel titled When the World Was Happy, has earned two starred reviews so far in advance of its September 29 release. It is a story about friendship and navigating life’s changes and challenges, and like many of Sáenz’s prior works, is set in El Paso.
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