Benjamin Alire Sáenz, an award-winning author and poet, died on 28 July 2026 in El Paso, Texas, after a long illness. He was 71. A spokesperson for his publisher, Simon & Schuster, confirmed his death The Guardian.

Sáenz was born in Old Picacho, New Mexico, in 1954. His own life was full of dramatic turns. He started out as a Catholic priest before leaving the church and later coming out as gay. Those experiences shaped his writing, which often explored questions of identity, faith, and belonging.

His most famous book is a novel called Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, published in 2012. It tells the story of two Mexican American teenage boys growing up and figuring out who they are. The book won major awards for LGBTQ+ literature and became one of the most important young adult novels of its time. A film version was released in 2023, directed by Aitch Alberto. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical Hamilton, narrated the audiobook and helped produce the film. He also narrated the audiobook of the sequel, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World.

The novel's popularity also made it a frequent target for book bans. It was pulled from schools in Granbury, Texas, and banned entirely in Russia and Belarus. The fact that the same book won top awards and was banned in different places shows the tension that followed Sáenz's career: his writing was celebrated by many and challenged by others.

In 2013, Sáenz won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for a collection of short stories called Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. He was the first Latino writer to win this honor, which is one of the biggest fiction prizes in the United States. The stories are set in El Paso and the neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, along the border where Sáenz spent much of his life PEN/Faulkner.

Sáenz studied creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso and started teaching there in the 1990s. He led the creative writing department before retiring in 2016. Over his decades as a professor, he influenced many younger writers.

He also wrote other books, including a poetry collection called The Book of What Remains and the novels In Perfect Light and Names on a Map. Almost all of his writing returned to the U.S.-Mexico border region, exploring identity, loss, faith, and the feeling of belonging.

Simon & Schuster plans to publish Sáenz's final book, When the World Was Happy, next month. The book was partly inspired by the death of his niece, who was killed in a shooting at a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1990. Sáenz said the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 reminded him of his niece's death and pushed him to write about it.

What makes Sáenz's story worth understanding is how many different worlds he connected. He wrote for young readers and adults. He wrote about being gay, being Mexican American, and living near the border. He won major literary prizes and had his books banned. His final book tackles gun violence, another issue that hits close to home for many communities. Through it all, Sáenz kept returning to the borderlands where he lived and worked, telling stories about people searching for who they are.