Benjamin Alire Sáenz was born in 1954 in Old Picacho, a small farming village outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, forty-two miles north of the U.S. / Mexico border. He was the fourth of seven children and was brought up in a traditional Mexican-American Catholic family. He entered the seminary in 1972, a decision that was as much political as it was religious. After concluding his theological studies at the University of Louvain, he was ordained a Catholic priest. Three and a half years later, he left the priesthood. At the age of 30, he entered the University of Texas at El Paso. He later received a fellowship at the University of Iowa. In 1988, he received a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. In 1993, he returned to the border to teach in the bilingual MFA program at UTEP.

Sáenz is the author of a previous book of poetry, Calendar of Dust , which won an American Book Award. Cinco Puntos published two of his other books of poetry called Elegies in Blue and the now out of print, Dark and Perfect Angels . His most recent book of poetry, The Book of What Remains , was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2010. He is the author of numerous novels, books for children and young adults as well as a previous collection of short stories. His award winning young adult novels are Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood , He Forgot to Say Goodbye , and Last Night I Sang to the Monster . His adult novels include Carry Me Like Water , The House of Forgetting , In Perfect Light , and Names on a Map .

Geronimo Garcia is a highly successful and internationally recognized graphic designer. Like he did for Sáenz' highly successful A Gift for Papa Diego (60,000 in print) he hand-crafted the little clay figures and created the colorful book design The Dog Who Loves Tortillas. He lives in El Paso, TX.