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Gabriella Burnham is a dual citizen of the United States and Brazil. Now a New York resident, she lived in São Paulo as a child and most of her family still lives there today. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's College and has been awarded fellowships to MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She has worked as a reporter, a creative writing teacher, and in immigration law. It Is Wood, It Is Stone is her first novel.
It Is Wood, It Is Stone is a fever dream of a book; absolutely captivating and wonderfully destabilizing. I could not put it down. It is about uprootedness, class and color, and sex. It is about women on the verge--of collapse, of escape, of self-knowledge--failing and flailing and propping one another up. It is a book about the limits of propriety and the boundlessness of grace. Burnham is a writer of such remarkable insight, it's impossible to believe this is her debut. --Justin Torres, author of We the Animals An absorbing and remarkably assured debut, It Is Wood, It Is Stone marries taut, cinematic suspense with intimate, textured domestic realism. Hits a major refresh button on the genre of psychological thriller and gives us something immensely satisfying and new. --Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox Intimate, unsparing, and compassionate, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is unlike anything I've read. It's a portrait of a woman adrift, but more than that, it's a reflection on race, class, and privilege, rendered in beautifully observed and textured prose that describes hazy internal weather with gimlet clarity. Gabriella Burnham writes with generosity--and with sympathy for human imperfection--and captures so well the pain, envy, and expectations in life that make up each of our pasts, and linger into our present. --Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin I would recommend this book based on the cover alone. Thankfully, the story inside is equally gorgeous, following three women in Sao Paulo: the anxious and listless Linda; her conflicted but steady maid, Marta; and Celia, an intoxicating artist with whom Linda leaves home. A lush depiction of privilege and power, sex and stability, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is an elegant arrival of a new talent. --Elle Burnham's captivating debut is told in a surprisingly seamless second person. . . . Burnham dazzles by exploring the overlapping circles of need and care though tensions of race, privilege, sexuality, history, and memory. Thanks to Burnham's precise, vivid understanding of her characters, this stranger-comes-to-town novel has the feel of a thriller as it illuminates the obligations of emotional labor. Burnham pulls off an electrifying twist on domestic fiction. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
