Gabriella Burnham

Gabriella Burnham is a Brazilian American novelist whose work considers migration, belonging, race, and the unequal labor that sustains domestic life. Holding Brazilian and American citizenship, she lived in São Paulo as a child and later worked as a reporter, creative writing teacher, and in immigration law. It Is Wood, It Is Stone, her 2020 debut, unfolds over a year in São Paulo. Linda arrives from the United States with her professor husband Dennis and becomes increasingly unmoored, while Marta, the couple's housekeeper, reads the household and its privileges from a sharply different position. Linda's connection with the artist Celia unsettles both women's routines and exposes histories of class and colorism that comfort had obscured. One World published the novel, whose research drew on Burnham's family memories, visits to Brazil, and study of domestic work and agricultural change. Her shifting viewpoints make care, dependence, and cultural distance part of the novel's structure rather than background themes.