Words on a wire: Interview with Benjamin Alire Saenz . Sunday, April 1st, 2012.

Interview with Benjamin Alire Saenz . Sunday, April 1st, 2012.

Extended interview with Benjamin Alire Saenz.

27: Daniel interviews his co-host, Benjamin Alire Saenz, about his new young adult novel, “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.” The book, which is set in El Paso in the 1980s, tells the story of loner teen Aristotle who befriends fellow teen, Dante, who is the exact opposite of himself.

In this week’s Poetic License, Daniel reflects on Chicano masculinity and its different incarnations in his life.

1 comment:

RhettJuly 8, 2012 at 2:34 PM
Mr. Saenz, I just finished "Aristotle and Dante..." and I LOVED it! I'm a 30 year old elementary teacher of Mexican American students... and I treasured every word of your book! There was so much heart to this book... Glad to find this interview of you about it... I'm so interested to learn more about you and your thoughts about this book!
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Words on a wire.

Words on a Wire is a radio show about fiction, poetry, the writing community, and whatever other issues concern literary writers and readers of books. Hosted by Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Daniel Chacón.

Originally broadcasted on www.ktep.org

Write to us: soychacon@gmail.com

El Paso, Texas.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz received the American Book Award in 1992 for his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust. A former Wallace Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford, he also received a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, a Southwest Book Award, the Paterson Prize, and the Americas Book Award and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. He is the author of over 10 books, both fiction and poetry. His most recent poetry collection is The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2010). His new YA novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is coming out in 2011 from Simon and Schuster. He is the chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories, Unending Rooms, was the 2007 winner of the Hudson Prize. He has also been awarded the American Book Award, the Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, and the Southwest Book Award. His first collection of stories, Chicano Chicanery was a finalist in the Patterson Fiction Prize and his novel and the shadows took him is available from Simon and Schuster. He has just completed a new collection of stories called Hotel Júarez. He’s a professor of Fiction Writing, Kafka, and Latino/a literature in the Creative Writing Department at UTEP.