Acclaimed Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Trailblazing Latino PEN/Faulkner Winner, Dead at 71

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, the groundbreaking fiction writer and poet who became the first Latino recipient of the PEN/Faulkner award, has died at 71. Sáenz passed away last week in El Paso, Texas following an extended illness, according to representatives at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.

A native of Old Picacho, New Mexico, Sáenz was an ordained Catholic priest before leaving the priesthood and publicly identifying as gay. His 2012 young adult novel “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” chronicling the romance between two Mexican American adolescents, earned both the Stonewall Honors Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for outstanding LGBTQ+ literature.

The novel achieved widespread cultural prominence after “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda narrated its audiobook edition and helped develop a 2023 film adaptation starring Max Pelayo and Reese Gonzales, with Eva Longoria in a supporting role. Miranda expressed his grief on Instagram, calling Sáenz a “maestro” and saying he was “heartbroken” by his death.

Despite critical acclaim, the novel faced censorship efforts, including temporary removal from schools in Granbury, Texas and outright bans in Russia and Belarus. Sáenz won the 2013 PEN/Faulkner award for “Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club,” a short story collection set in El Paso and across the border in Juarez, Mexico.

For over two decades beginning in the 1990s, Sáenz taught at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he earned a master’s degree in creative writing and later chaired the creative writing department before retiring in 2016. His other works include the sequel “Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World,” the poetry collection “The Book of What Remains,” and adult novels including “In Perfect Light” and “Names on a Map.”

Simon & Schuster will release his forthcoming novel “When the World Was Happy” next month, a work partly inspired by his niece’s death during a 1990 bowling alley shooting in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Sáenz has said the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas reignited his determination to write the book, explaining he wanted to explore how people endure and move forward after senseless tragedy.