He was a poet, novelist, and short-story writer; his 1990 collection Nouvelles désenchantées was awarded the Goncourt de la Nouvelle prize; his collected poems were published in 2005 as De l’OuLiPo et de la Chandelle Verte, edited by François Caradec. Bens was also an editor at the Encyclopédie de la Pléïade at Gallimard, a compiler of crossword puzzles, and a founding member of the OuLiPoPo, the workshop for potential detective fiction.