The Build-a-Monster Workshop by Juan Manuel Pérez
Raw Dog Screaming Press (May 7, 2026)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Pedro Iniguez is a Mexican-American Bram Stoker, Elgin, and Dwarf Stars Award-winning science-fiction and horror writer from Los Angeles. He has also been a Rhysling finalist and Puschart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He is the author of Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future, Fever Dreams of a Parasite, Echoes and Embers: Speculative Stories, Sythetic Dawns & Crimson Dusks, and the SF novel Control Theory. His newest collection is The Build-a-Monster Workshop.
Divided into four parts, The Build-a-Monster Workshop approaches the idea of monsters from all sorts of speculative angles, whether it be science fiction (“Biology Class Blues” or “Assembling a Father”), ghosts (“The Girl Who Played by the Tombstones” or “The Haunted Roadside Motel”), or more traditional monsters from fable and folklore. Not satisfied with that, Pérez even concocts new monsters of his own, such as “The Lint Fairy,” a poem which begins:
When he finds you in the night
try not to weep
as he plucks the lint
from your bellybutton as you sleep.
You’ve heard the urban legends,
and didn’t think them true,
but now he’s come crawling
through the window just for you.
This is the sort of narrative poetry which permeates this collection, poetry both clever and haunting.
As a multiple-award winning poet, Pedro Iniguez’s work needs no introduction. He already established himself as a speculative phenom with Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future and The Build-a-Monster Workshop is yet another packed collection. The variety of approaches to the theme of “monster” is so vast that any fan of speculative poetry will find something of value in between these covers and will want to read this book as soon as they possibly can.
