Now author\u00a0Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz brings home the prestigious\u00a0PEN\/Faulkner award for fiction writing<\/a>\u00a0and gives the border credit for his career.<\/p>\n “These are the people who have given me words. These are the people who’ve given me life,” S\u00e1enz\u00a0told\u00a0Fronteras reporter M\u00f3nica Ortiz Uribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not just a great American author and poet, not just the first Latino writer to earn the PEN\/Faulkner prize, S\u00e1enz\u00a0easily crosses the border between writer and teacher too. He heads the creative writing department at the University of Texas at El Paso, which offers the nation’s only bilingual Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing<\/a>. (Full disclosure: I received my MFA through this program in 2005).<\/p>\n S\u00e1enz, according to one of his publishers,\u00a0Cinco Puntos Press,<\/a> “believes the border experience, with all of its turbulence and uncertainty, offers a specific and essential vision to American letters.”<\/p>\n But why stop with books and lectures when you love writing and reading and teaching and there’s a fast-paced world out there where people are wired to their cell phones and tablets?<\/p>\n Courtesy KTEP.org<\/p><\/div>\n Entertaining and packed with great interviews, essays and poetry with established and emerging writers, the show’s formula appears to be one part “Fresh Air” with NPR’s Terry Gross<\/a> and one part “This American Life”<\/a> with guest writers talking about whatever they want during the 3-minute “Poetic License” segment.<\/p>\n “That’s the cool thing about doing a radio show hoy en dia –<\/em>\u00a0in these days – because people from all over the world can listen. If you have a computer, if you have Internet access, you can listen to our show,”\u00a0Chac\u00f3n said on a recent episode after hearing from a fan in Madrid.<\/p>\n Going digital also lets\u00a0S\u00e1enz and\u00a0Chac\u00f3n reach out to a diverse network of guests anywhere via recordings or phone. The list of recent guests includes\u00a0Billy Collins<\/a>,\u00a0Sergio Troncoso<\/a>, Rita Mae Brown<\/a>, David Shapiro<\/a>\u00a0and Paisley Rekdal.<\/a><\/p>\n I’ve been scanning the webs for a similar program produced by active writers and educators and have yet to find anything of this caliber. Some writers choose to just write. Many writers also teach to provide steady income. \u00a0By taking to the airwaves,\u00a0S\u00e1enz and\u00a0Chac\u00f3n are crossing new borders as artists to reach an on-the-go audio audience and make a case for the future of literature.<\/p>\n Follow them on Facebook<\/a>. Check out a couple of shows and, if you like what you hear, send National Public Radio a note to include Words on a Wire in its podcast lineup<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You may not at first think of the U.S. Southwest as an incubator for literary innovation until you realize that its artists \u00a0know that borders are artificial \u00a0and arbitrary and they can’t resist crossing them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-border-culture","category-new-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/WordOnWirePoster.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2wBu4-7c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Multicultural, multilingual bridges<\/h3>\n
Digital frontiers<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/digitalegre.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Chacon-and-ben.jpg\" "\\"Chacon")
<\/a>Help build the network<\/h3>\n