Benítez has two sons from a previous marriage: Christopher Title, born in 1963, and Jon Title, born in 1965. Following the completion of her education, Benítez worked at a variety of jobs, including stints as a teacher, Spanish-language translator, and marketing liaison.
Benítez has remarked that she "came to writing late." She published her first novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers (1993), when she was fifty-two years old. Speaking with the writer who prepared an on-line reading guide for her second novel, Bitter Grounds (1997), Benítez described the circumstances of her decision to become a writer:
When I was 39, almost as a lark, I took a class in writing and all the stories that had impressed my heart began to bubble up. I was hooked and began to think of being a writer. I quit my job and began writing full time. It was an especially big risk, I think, because I was writing stories about "the other America," Latino stories that had not yet found a place in mainstream American literature. It took me 13 years to get my first book published.
Benítez left her job translating management-training manuals to begin writing her first novel, a mystery set in Missouri that she has not published because of the harsh rejections it received--a novel that she reports remains hidden under her bed: "a book too dreadful to submit, but a book that taught me the discipline needed to rise and face the page each day.
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