Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s latest book, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, is a collection of stories whose characters are all tied in one way or another to this famed watering hole on the Avenida Juárez, where the author says, “people go when they’re in trouble, when they’re looking for trouble or when they’re trying to get out of trouble.” A prolific writer and master of many genres, his books include the novel Carry Me Like Water, the young adult book Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood, and the poetry collection Dark and Perfect Angels.

Named one of 2010’s “Fifty of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World” by Poets & Writers magazine, Sáenz studied philosophy and theology and was a Wallace E. Stegner fellow in poetry at Stanford University. Born in Old Picacho, New Mexico in 1954, Sáenz has been a member of the faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso since 1992.