Benjamin Alire Saenz makes history -- he is the first Latino to win the PEN/Faulkner literary award
by sernabad
Benjamin Alire Saenz, a novelist from Texas, has become the first Latino to win the prestigious 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his collection of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (on order). Set along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, near the Rio Grande, Saenz's stories focus on the people who live and work along Avenida Juarez.
Saenz is no stranger to awards. Among the honors he has collected over the years as a poet and a novelist are the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1993 and the Southwest Book Award in 1996, given by Border Regional Library Association, for Carry Me Like Water. 1995.
Saenz, 58, was born in New Mexico. A former Catholic priest, he is now the Chairman of Creative Writing at the University of Texas, El Paso. This latest honor comes with a $15,000 check.
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I look forward to sampling
I look forward to sampling these short stories. Just finished his latest teen fiction title, 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' c2012 which landed, rightly so I think, on the '2013 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults.'
This is great news! He's a
This is great news! He's a wonderful writer. I LOVED "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe," a teen novel by him. (Which recently won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, Pura Belpré (Author) Award, and the Stonewall Book Award.)