Benjamin Alire Sáenz was born in 1954 in Old Picacho, a small farming village outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, forty-two miles north of the U.S. / Mexico border. He was the fourth of seven children and was brought up in a traditional Mexican-American Catholic family. He entered the seminary in 1972, a decision that was as much political as it was religious. After concluding his theological studies at the University of Louvain, he was ordained a Catholic priest. Three and a half years later, he left the priesthood.

At the age of 30, he entered the University of Texas at El Paso. He later received a fellowship at the University of Iowa. In 1988, he received a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. In 1993, he returned to the border to teach in the bilingual MFA program at UTEP.

Sáenz is the author of a previous book of poetry, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award. Cinco Puntos published two of his other books of poetry called Elegies in Blue and the now out of print, Dark and Perfect Angels.

He is the author of numerous novels, books for children and young adults as well as a collection of short stories. His bestselling bilingual children's books include: A Gift from Papá Diego,Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas and A Perfect Season for Dreaming.

His award winning young adult novel is Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood. An essay by Ben Sáenz entitled "Exile, El Paso, Texas," appears in another Cinco Puntos Press book, The Late Great Mexican Border, which is now out of print.