Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club

Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club
Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Country United States
Language English
Published Cinco Puntos Press
Awards PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2013)
Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction (2013)
Stonewall Honor (2014)

Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club is a collection of short stories by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, published in 2012 by Cinco Puntos Press.

The book compiles seven short stories, all set in the Hispanic/Latino community in El Paso, Texas in the United States and its neighbouring city of Juárez, Chihuahua in Mexico.[1]

The Kentucky Club, a real-life bar a few blocks south of the border crossing in Juárez, appears in all seven stories as a linking motif.[1][2] In addition, all seven stories touch in some way on themes of survival, of trying to live through pain, grief and loss and of the struggle to find and maintain love, both within the protagonists' birth families and in their sexual or romantic relationships.[2] Several also touch on the outbreak of violent crime that engulfed Juárez in the 1990s, and the ways in which that fractured the interrelated cross-border culture of the two cities.

Awards

The book won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2013,[3] making Sáenz the first Latino writer ever to win the award,[4] and also won a Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Fiction category at the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards.[5] It was also named at a 2014 Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 "Vibrant 'Club' Links Two Countries In Award-Winning Book". NPR, April 30, 2013.
  2. 1 2 "‘Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz". Lambda Literary Foundation, May 31, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Book of short stories wins PEN/Faulkner prize". Associated Press, March 19, 2013.
  4. ↑ "El Paso author Benjamin Alire Sáenz wins PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction". El Paso Times, March 19, 2013.
  5. ↑ "25th annual Lambda Literary Award winners announced". LGBT Weekly, June 4, 2013.
  6. ↑ "2014 Stonewall Book Awards Announced". American Library Association, January 28, 2014.


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