Benjamin Alire Sáenz, an award-winning fiction writer and poet who drew upon his sexuality and his life on the Southern border, has died at age 71. He was the first Latino to win the PEN/Faulkner prize.
Sáenz, who produced a story collection that won the PEN/Faulkner prize and a young adult novel that received acclaim from readers and reviewers and condemnation from censors, died last week in El Paso, Texas after a lengthy illness, according to a spokesperson for Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. Additional details were not immediately available.
