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Benitez
writes the kind of books you can’t put down.
As The Denver Post puts it, “Benitez is a remarkable
storyteller."
Sandra Benitez has spent
her life moving between the Latin American culture
of her Puerto Rican mother and the Anglo-American
culture of her father. She was born March 26, 1941
in Washington D.C., one of a pair of identical twins.
Her sister, Susana, died just 37 days after their
birth. A year later, her father, who worked for the
U.S. State Department, was assigned to Mexico, where
her sister, Anita, was born. Not long after, the family
transferred with him to El Salvador and this is where
Sandra lived for most of the next 20 years. In Latin
America, she learned that life is frail and capricious;
that people can find joy in the midst of insurmountable
obstacles; that, in the end, it is hope that sustains.
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When
Benitez reached high school age, her parents, in part to “Americanize”
her, sent Sandra to her paternal grandparents’ modest
dairy farm in northeastern Missouri. She attended Unionville
high school, returning each summer to El Salvador. In Missouri,
she saw the back-breaking work and quiet self-reliance required
to extract a living from the land and its animals. She learned
that life is what you make it; that satisfaction comes from
a job well done; that, in the end, it is steadfastness that
leads to goals accomplished and dreams realized.
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In 1980 she began to write fiction. It was not until
13 years later that her first book, A Place Where
the Sea Remembers, set in Mexico, was published. It
won wonderful reviews and a number of prizes including
the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, the Minnesota
Book Award, and selection as a finalist for the Los
Angeles Times’ First Fiction Award. Her second
book, Bitter Grounds, set in El Salvador, won an American
Book award and a nomination for Great Britain’s
prestigious Orange Prize. Both books, and her third
as well, have been published in more than half a dozen
languages.
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Sandra’s third novel, The Weight of All Things, also
set in El Salvador, tells the heart-breaking story of a
nine-year-old boy caught up in a vicious civil war. While
it won no awards, it garnered plenty of praise from reviewers.
Her latest novel, Night of the Radishes draws on her unique
bi-cultural background. In it, a Minnesota woman, plunged
into depression by a series of family tragedies, finds a
long-lost brother and redemption in the mystical atmosphere
of Oaxaca, Mexico. The book was published by Hyperion in
January, 2004.
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Benitez’s
work has also appeared in a number of magazines and
anthologies. Most notably, A Place Called Home: Twenty
Writing Women Remember, Mickey Pearlman, editor, St.
Martin’s Press, and Sleeping with One Eye Open,
Marilyn Kallet, editor, University of Georgia Press.
Sandra’s work has earned her nearly two dozen
honors, awards and grants, and she is much in demand
as a teacher and speaker. In 1997 she was selected
as the University of Minnesota Edelstein-Keller Distinguished
Writer in Residence. In 1998 she did the Writers Community
Residency for the YMCA National Writer’s Voice
program. In the spring of 2001 she held the Knapp
Chair in Humanities as Associate Professor of Creative
Writing at the University of San Diego. Other teaching
residencies include Bread Loaf Writers Conference,
Flight of the Mind, the University of Minnesota Split
Rock Arts Program, and Hamline (Minn.) University.
Sandra is the recipient of the 2004 National Hispanic
Heritage Award Honoree for Literature.
In December, 2006, Benitez received one of the first
United States Artists Awards, being named a USA Gund
Fellow.
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Benitez has lectured at colleges,
high schools and professional organizations coast to coast.
All of her first three novels, but especially A Place Where
the Sea Remembers, are used extensively in classrooms through
the country and are book group favorites as well.
Benitez lives with her husband, Jim Kondrick, in Edina, Minnesota,
and has completed her first non-fiction book Bag
Lady: A Memoir, The Triumphant True Story of Loss, Illness and Recovery. The book is an
account of Sandra's 30 year struggle with Ulcerative Colitis,
and her acceptance of the ileostomy surgery that changed her
life.
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