Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz, first Latino PEN/Faulkner winner, dies at 71

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, the award‑winning novelist and poet who was the first Latino to receive the PEN/Faulkner Prize, died at age 71 in El Paso, Texas after a lengthy illness. He was celebrated for his young‑adult novel *Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe*, which earned a Stonewall Honors Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award and was later adapted into an audio edition narrated by Lin‑Manuel Miranda. Sáenz’s work, often set on the U.S.–Mexico border, explored LGBTQ themes and faced censorship, including temporary removal from a Texas school district and bans in Russia and Belarus.

Born in Old Picacho, New Mexico, Sáenz was once an ordained Catholic priest before coming out as gay. He taught for decades at the University of Texas at El Paso, serving as chair of its creative‑writing department before retiring in 2016. Simon & Schuster will publish his posthumous memoir *When the World Was Happy* in the coming month, a work that reflects on personal loss and the 2022 Uvalde school shooting that inspired him to write about survival.

His death was mourned by fellow writers and artists, with Lin‑Manuel Miranda posting, “Heartbroken… Rest easy, maestro.”