| |
| |
|
|
R E S O L U T I O N
|
|
|
WHEREAS, Benjamin Alire Sáenz of El Paso has been named the |
|
|
recipient of the 2023 Texas Medal of Arts Award for the Literary |
|
|
Arts by the Texas Cultural Trust; and |
|
|
WHEREAS, An acclaimed poet, novelist, and children's author, |
|
|
Benjamin Sáenz was born in New Mexico to a family with strong West |
|
|
Texas roots; his passions for learning and social justice led him to |
|
|
join the Catholic clergy, and he completed his bachelor's degree in |
|
|
humanities and philosophy at St. Thomas Seminary in Colorado and |
|
|
studied theology at the University of Louvain in Belgium; three |
|
|
years as a parish priest in El Paso taught him that his real calling |
|
|
was the literary life; and |
|
|
WHEREAS, Mr. Sáenz waited tables for a time to save up for |
|
|
graduate school; after earning a master's degree in creative |
|
|
writing from The University of Texas at El Paso, he embarked on |
|
|
fellowships at the University of Iowa and Stanford University; his |
|
|
first collection of poems, Calendar of Dust, received the American |
|
|
Book Award; in 1994, he returned to his beloved El Paso, joining the |
|
|
faculty of his alma mater and eventually becoming chair of the UTEP |
|
|
bilingual master of fine arts creative writing program; and |
|
|
WHEREAS, Uncommonly prolific, Mr. Sáenz has produced a |
|
|
wide-ranging body of work, including six volumes of poetry, four |
|
|
novels, two collections of short stories, four bilingual children's |
|
|
books, and five young adult novels; teachers across the country |
|
|
value his writing for its powerful representation of the Latino |
|
|
youth experience, and his coming-of-age love story, Aristotle and |
|
|
Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, became an international |
|
|
bestseller; translated into two dozen languages, it has won nearly |
|
|
30 literary awards, and a movie version premiered at the 2022 |
|
|
Toronto International Film Festival; the book landed on the New |
|
|
York Times Bestseller List a decade after its first publication, |
|
|
and its sequel debuted at the top of the list; his many honors |
|
|
include the Texas Book Award and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime |
|
|
Achievement, the highest conferred by the Texas Institute of |
|
|
Letters; in addition, he was the first Latino and first Texan to |
|
|
receive the prestigious national PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; |
|
|
and |
|
|
WHEREAS, Benjamin Sáenz has touched the hearts and stirred |
|
|
the imaginations of innumerable people through writing that is at |
|
|
once deeply personal, broadly human, and richly expressive of the |
|
|
ambiguities of the borderlands; now, therefore, be it |
|
|
RESOLVED, That the Senate of the 88th Texas Legislature |
|
|
hereby congratulate Benjamin Alire Sáenz on his receipt of the 2023 |
|
|
Texas Medal of Arts Award for the Literary Arts from the Texas |
|
|
Cultural Trust and extend to him sincere best wishes for the future; |
|
|
and, be it further |
|
|
RESOLVED, That an official copy of this resolution be |
|
|
prepared for Mr. Sáenz as an expression of high regard by the Texas |
|
|
Senate. |