Emily Perez is the author of Backyard Migration Route and a recipient of grants and scholarships from the Artist Trust, Jack Straw Writers, Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop, Summer Literary Seminars, and Inprint, Houston. She is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and her poems have appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Calyx, Borderlands, and DIAGRAM. She teaches English in Denver, where she lives with her husband and sons.
“With House of Sugar, House of Stone,Emily Pérez has allowed the
uncanny to creep through the architectural cracks in our childhood
psyches, bringing back to us our lullabies and tales, mysteriously
changed. The result is both haunting and beautiful. The music
here, combined with the familiar motifs (which morph and enlarge
under the spell of this poet), forge lines and images and
narrative—both tantalizingly fragmented and satisfyingly
complete—of genuine power. The collection pairs story with
song, specifics with innuendo, in such a compelling way that I dare
anyone to read the first poem and put this book back
down. This is something strange and new—and very
exciting.”
—Laura Kasischke“House of Sugar, House of Stone draws
heavily on Grimms’ timeless fairy tales to tell its story, but
Pérez casts the themes of motherhood, betrayal, and longing in a
light that is unmistakably contemporary. The effect is powerful and
devastating.”
—Blas Falconer
“Emily Pérez knows how to cast a spell. In this smart, brave book,
she uses her honed musicality to enchant the reader while she
plumbs the great domestic mysteries: How do you wed and stay a
self? How do you both procreate and create? The dark forests of
Grimms’ fairy tales pulse through her poems. By the time you leave
the wilderness of her singing, you will have been changed. Home
will never look the same again.”
—Sasha West
"Several poems in House of Sugar, House of Stone draw
from the world of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and ingeniously connect that
world of fantastical circumstances and consequences with
contemporary family life. Reading through the collection, I found
myself noting the influence and color these poems lend to other
poems grounded in meditations on more personal and local
circumstances and consequences. . . . The more personal poems,
however, present a struggle with artistry and responsibility that
is all the more relatable for its directness."
—The Friday Influence
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