Background

Benjamin Saenz was born on August 16, 1954, in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico.

Education

Benjamin graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in humanities and philosophy in 1977. He studied theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981.

In 1985, Benjamin returned to school, and studied English and creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an Master of Arts degree in creative writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a Doctor of Philosophy student in American literature. A year later, he was awarded a Stegner Fellowship. He entered the Doctor of Philosophy program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years.

Career

While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, Benjamin completed his first book of poems, "Calendar of Dust." Before completing his Doctor of Philosophy, he began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.

Benjamin's first novel, "Carry Me Like Water" was a saga that brought together the Victorian novel and the Latin American tradition of magic realism, and received much critical attention. In 2005, he curated a show of photographs by Julian Cardona. In "The Book of What Remains", his fifth book of poems, he writes to the core truth of life's ever-shifting memories.

Benjamin continues to teach in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the co-host, with Daniel Chacón of the KTEP-produced radio and online show on writers and writing, "Words on a Wire."

Achievements

• Benjamin won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2013 for "Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club", the first Latino writer ever to win the award. He also won two awards at the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards, in the categories of Gay Male Fiction for "Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club" and Children’s/Young Adult for "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe." On July 15, 2014, he was announced as a finalist for the prestigious NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature.

Works

More photos

• audiobook

  • Last Night I Sang to the Monster 2011

• book

  • The Inexplicable Logic of My Life 2017
  • Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe 2014
  • The Last Cigarette on Earth 2017
  • Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club 2012
  • He Forgot to Say Goodbye 2010
  • Carry Me Like Water 2005
  • In Perfect Light: A Novel 2008
  • Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood 2011

Religion

Benjamin was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.

Personality

Sáenz came out as gay in the late 2000s, at age 54. He has acknowledged in interviews that he had difficulty coming to terms with his sexuality due to having been sexually abused as a child.