Born in El Campo, Texas, Emma Pérez has published essays in history and feminist theory as well as The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Her novel, Gulf Dreams, was first published in 1996 and was considered to be one of the first Chicana lesbian novels in print. Pérez has earned her PhD in History at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In fall 2003, she joined the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder. Her most recent novel, Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory, (University of Texas Press, 2009) is a Chicana lesbian western that challenges white-male-centered westerns and that has recently been awarded the Christopher Isherwood Fiction Fellowship for 2012.