Sandra Benitez (born March 26, 1941 in Washington, D.C.) is an American novelist.

Life

Sandra Benitez was born in Washington, D.C., and spent ten years of her childhood in El Salvador while her father was based there as a diplomat. She attended high school in Missouri from age 14 and subsequently graduated with a B.S. (1962) and M.A. (1974) from Northeast Missouri State University.^[1]

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.^[2][3]

Awards

• 2004 Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature.^[4]
• 2006 United States Artists Gund Fellow^[5]
• 1998 American Book Award, for Bitter Grounds

Works

• A Place Where the Sea Remembers. Simon & Schuster. 1993. ISBN 978-0-671-89267-8.
• Bitter Grounds. Macmillan. 1998. ISBN 978-0-312-19541-0.
• The Weight of All Things. Hyperion. 2002. ISBN 978-0-7868-8703-3. Sandra Benitez.
• Night of the Radishes. Hyperion. January 2004. ISBN 978-0-7868-6400-3.
• Bag Lady: A Memoir, The Triumphant True Story of Loss, Illness and Recovery. Benitez Books. 2005. ISBN 978-0-9774848-0-5.

Anthologies

• Mickey Pearlman, ed. (15 October 1997). "Home Views". A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember. St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 978-0-312-17443-9.
• Marilyn Kallet, Judith Ortiz Cofer, ed. (1999). "Fire, Wax, Smoke". Sleeping with One Eye Open. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2153-0.