Benjamin Alire Saenz
Sáenz was born the fourth of seven children in New Mexico. A graduate of Las Cruces High School, he received his B.A. in Humanities and Philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado before heading to Belgium to study theology at the University of Louvain. After spending a few years as a priest in El Paso, he went back to school, first at the University of Texas, El Paso in their MA Creative Writing program, then briefly at the University of Iowa before being awarded a Wallace E....