Future editions of Aristotle and Dante will display merit seals for the Pura Belpré Author Award for excellence in depicting and celebrating the Latino cultural experience, the Stonewall Book Award for literary excellence in depicting the LGBT experience, and a Michael L. Printz Honor for the best writing in teen literature. Likely, the novel’s cover will have to be slightly redesigned to incorporate these various honors, “a great problem to have” for an author, Sáenz jokes.

SLJ caught up with Sáenz in between his meetings as chair of the MFA bilingual creative writing department at the University of Texas at El Paso for a revealing chat about his reaction to the YMA wins, his personal inspirations for Aristotle and Dante, his writing process, and his next YA project.

How do you feel about being selected by three very different YMA committees?
It was like a mirror of me! It made me very happy in a profound way. It was all the communities that I claim: the gay community, the Latino community, and the mainstream community. I’m part of the mainstream. I was educated and integrated into America by going to school, and when I went to college in the 1970s there were no Mexican-Americans. But I didn’t feel left out; my friends loved me. I was integrated. So even though I’ve always claimed the Mexican/Chicano community, and I’ve been aware of racism, I have not lived a segregated life.

What inspired you to write Aristotle and Dante?
I was married for 15 years, but I really had to come to terms with my own sexuality at the age of 54. One of the things I had to come to terms with is that I was sexually abused as a boy. It’s not that I didn’t remember; it’s that I didn’t want to think about it. The thought of being with a man was unappealing, so it took me a lot of therapy and time to come to terms with my life, and me.

So I thought I wanted to write a gay-themed book, I thought that I wanted to write a book about a young boy who really didn’t know that he was gay. I mean Ari really doesn’t know it. That’s the theme—what does he know? So I created this situation, and I thought about what names I would give them, and I love the name Dante and I teach the Inferno a lot. And “Ari” is not uncommon among Latinos, or at least Mexican Nationals. So I just started to write this story and I wanted it to be set not in the present time, because I think it’s easier now for boys to admit they’re gay. In the 1980s I don’t think it was so easy, and I didn’t want to have all this texting stuff in the book.

And the first thing I wanted to write about was the relationship between Ari and his mother.

How have your experiences shaped the story?
I wanted to represent two very different Mexican-American families. These are families that I knew—there are working class families like Ari’s, and professional Mexican-American families and it’s not a phenomenon. There are professional families and they’re never portrayed; there’s lots of anti-Mexican rhetoric that says we’re all illegals, all recent immigrants. None of this is true. I just wanted to portray a normal Mexican-American family—and they’re very American. I wanted that contrast because I wanted my audience to know that there is a wide variety of Mexican-American experience in this country. But I also wanted to make it feel real. They are real people. I really fell in love with both the mothers. I always fall in love with my characters, but I know women like this. They love their sons and just because they aren’t always wise in the way they love you doesn’t mean they don’t love you. Ari’s mother is very loving but also very controlling—in a loving way, but controlling nonetheless.

Was it a conscious choice to include so many caring adults in the story?
I think that young men need father figures; one way or another they’re going to find them or get them, and (hopefully not) suffer for it. I’ve mentored a lot of young men that have had terrible relationships with their fathers and I’ve been a stand-in, albeit an academic one. But it’s been a privilege for me to be in their lives and I think that impacts my writing.

Maybe too much young adult fiction is about teens that are in a world apart from adults and that’s just not true for a lot of teens. And Mexican-American teens have good parents—it’s just not true that you are ostracized if you are gay. It’s true in a lot of Latino-American families but it’s also not  true in a lot of Latino-American families. My novels are so hard, all of them. I wanted to write something tender. I thought, “I don’t want to write something hard.” Part of it is that I’m such a sentimental man and you wouldn’t know it from my work. And I’m afraid of being sentimental and I was afraid of making this into a sentimental novel, but I thought I could do it. I could make it feel real and make the characters feel real. That was the hard part for me. I like to think I pulled it off.

What is your writing process like? As a college professor, how do you find the time?
I write on Fridays, and I get up early and I write in the mornings, because once office hours begin, I’m just busy busy. Luckily, where I live the walk literally takes 7 minutes. I like being department chair actually; I’ve grown into it. But I’m just a really old-fashioned teacher. I don’t teach online. I’m not against it—a lot of MFA programs have online classes—but it’s not something I do.

I love what I teach and I like young people. I know some writers feel that the teaching takes time away from their writing, but quite frankly it’s never hurt my writing. And my students read the books! And my nephews and nieces read them and analyze me. I get a big kick out of it.

What are you working on now?
The novel I’m writing is about a young man who is adopted (his dad is a Mexican-American gay artist) but he doesn’t feel adopted at all. One of my nephews is adopted, and he doesn’t wonder about his real family at all. So this kid is telling a story about how he came to be and the rest is how he watches this family as they go through this crisis; the matriarch of the family, his grandmother, is dying. He is in pain but he is a watcher, watching his father deal with this loss. We also learn how he came to be adopted in this family. In one of the opening chapters, his father asks him once if he ever thinks of his real father, and he says, “Yes. You’re my real father, and I think about you all the time.”

It’s going to be a painful novel in some ways with the automatic story line of the grandmother dying, but it’s the journey of him watching. Like Aristotle and Dante, it’s a love story between this young man and the family that he’s been adopted into, and how his love for them and their love for him is so profound. And of course I need to write that novel because my mother died a year ago.

I’m very excited about it. I love to write and I love to figure it out. It’s like you’re learning your craft all over again; each project is new and you learn something new. And I just sold a book of short stories for adults and those are not tender. Those are hard. That’s my world. I think I live between violence and tenderness. I think we all do. So I just try to incorporate that somehow into my art.

We’re just a few days away from the most important announcement in the world of children’s literature. Awarded every year by the American Library Association, honors like the Newbery and Caldecott Medals are highly coveted by kid lit authors and illustrators. And while libraries all over the country have organized mock awards programs in recent months where participants choose their favorite books as possible Newbery and Caldecott winners, not much has been heard about the other top prizes that will bestowed early on January 28. School Library Journal editors and contributors took a stab at naming a few titles that might just win one of these—lesser publicized, yet still highly sought after—Youth Media Awards.

The Coretta Scott King Awards are given annually to one outstanding African-American author and to one African-American illustrator of books for children and young adults who demonstrate an appreciation of African-American culture and universal human values.

“Two possibilities for the Coretta Scott King illustrator award—for their sheer stunningness and timeliness—are Shane W. Evans for his We March (Roaring Brook), and Kadir Nelson for his artistic representation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech (Random),” effusively says Joy Fleishhacker, former SLJ book review editor and frequent contributor.

For the author award, Daryl Grabarek, editor of SLJ’s Curriculum Connections newsletter and SLJ’s “Touch & Go” blog, has great hopes for Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s No Crystal Stair: A Novel in Documents, Based on the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Carolrhoda). “This stunner is a lens onto New York City and African-American history, but so much more, including a look at feisty individual whose life was changed by his books, and whose work in turn, helped others realize their dreams,” she says.

Already a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner, it could be a shoe-in for a Coretta Scott King—and possibly even a Newbery, Grabarek notes.

The Odyssey Award is given to the producer of the best audiobook for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States. Phyllis Levy Mandell, SLJ managing editor and Multimedia Review editor, has her heart set on the audiobook versions of Libba Bray’s The Diviners (Listening Library) or Laura Amy Schlitz’s Splendors and Gloom (Recorded Books). Both titles are serious contenders, she says.

The Pura Belpré Awards are presented to one Latino/Latina writer and one Latino/Latina illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in outstanding works of literature for children and youth.

Shelley Diaz, assistant editor of SLJ’s Book Review anticipates that narrative award will go to either Guadalupe McCall Garcia for her Odyssey retelling, Summer of the Mariposas (Lee & Low) or Margarita Engle’s novel in verse The Wild Book (Houghton Harcourt), both past Belpré winners. Diaz adds, however, that The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (Scholastic), written by Sonia Manzano (best known as Sesame Street’s “Maria”) might surprise everyone.

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal is awarded to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in the United States in English.

SLJ Executive Editor Rick Margolis and Contributing Editor Rocco Staino both think that Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb (Roaring Brook) could take this top nonfiction award. Barbara Kerley’s Those Rebels, John & Tom (Scholastic) also made Staino’s contender list.

Mahnaz Dar, editorial assistant of SLJ’s Book Review, is going the slithery slimy route, choosing Nic Bishop Snakes (Scholastic) for the Sibert. “Bishop also deserves some kudos for his dedication—he was actually bitten several times while photographing his subjects,” she says. “How many nonfiction writers can boast about bite marks in the service of their craft?”

The Schneider Family Book Award is presented to an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

The title that automatically comes to mind when discussing this award, hand down, is Wonder by R. J. Palacio (Random), Grabarek says.  An SLJ Best Book of 2012, the touching middle grade novel has tugged kids’ heartstrings since its publication date. Grabarek also chose it as her school library’s book club pick; now there’s a waiting list read it, with more copies on order. “The writing and characterizations are superb, and there’s a lot here for kids to ponder and talk about—which they’re eager to do,” she argues.

Staino also says Jepp, Who Defied the Stars (Hyperion) by Katherine Marsh might have a shot.

The Stonewall Book Award recognizes works with exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience.

Diaz and Dar are in agreement when it comes to the novel that will dominate this category: A. S. King’s Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown). “It captures the voice of a smart, sensitive teen perfectly,” says Dar. Diaz adds, “This novel is not only about romantic love, but loves of all kinds: for your family, for your friends, for even strangers. Most importantly, it’s about loving yourself, even though you’re still not sure who that self is yet.”

Other SLJ favorites for the category include two debut works, E. M. Kokie’s Personal Effects (Candlewick) and Emily M. Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post (HarperCollins). Chelsey Philpot, SLJ’s associate editor of Book Review, is crossing her fingers that the latter will pull ahead for the win.

The Theodore Seuss Geisel Award goes to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States

Mo Willems usually walks away with this prize, and his Let’s Go for a Drive! (Hyperion) just might take it again this year, staffers say. But there are a few fervent fans for beloved author/illustrator Kevin Henkes. “I can’t think of a more charming introduction to reading than Penny and Her Doll. Penny is an endearing, appealing character whom children will adore,” shares Dar.

Fleishhacker can’t decide between the two. “I really like both of these titles for their solid writing, the way that the artwork and the narrative work in harmony to tell the story, their originality, and the way that they are both entertaining and extremely accessible for beginning readers,” she says. “Both of these titles will encourage and stand up to repeated reads—certainly an essential element for a beginning reader.” Diaz hopes that the dark horse, Sonya Hartnett’s pitch-perfect Sadie and Ratz (Candlewick) will be the last easy reader left standing.

Stay tuned to the live streaming webcast announcements on Monday, January 28. Or check our Youth Media Award coverage via Twitter and SLJ.com.