Gay Takeaway Q&A: Candy Spectacular with Sarah Perry
Praise be to our bisexual lord and savior Almond Joy/Mounds! 🙏
Sarah Perry (she/they) is the author of Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover (Mariner, 2025) and After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Recent short work includes a Huffington Post Personals essay that reached 1M+ readers and an essay for Cake Zine that was a nominee for the James Beard Foundation’s M. F. K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Her writing has also appeared in Off Assignment, Lesbians Are Miracles, Elle magazine, and The Guardian. She holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University, was the 2019 McGee Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Davidson College, and is now Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Colorado State University.
What was the last candy you ate?
A candy called Glacia. I've been spoiling myself over break and went to a sauna and cold plunge place last night. They put one of those on top of the little pile of towels. It's funny how when you have a book coming out, you become kind of obsessed with yourself, or you're just constantly thinking about the book. And I was like, how did they know? They gave me candy!
So I did the whole hot/cold thing and then I treated myself to my singular candy afterward. It was really good. It's a log shaped hard candy, kind of like a long Jolly Rancher shape. And it's opaque white, almost like a piece of ice! And it's some sort of mint. Very good.
Whoa, that's such a fitting candy for a cold plunge!
It was so cute. I'll be looking for those. I'd never seen them before!
I don't have a great memory, but I do have an excellent memory for every candy jingle from every commercial from the 90s. Do you have any candy jingles that stay stuck in your head? Do you remember the “stretch it out out” Caramello song? Or the Whatchamacallit song?
You have to sing it for me. I don't remember it.
I can’t. I don’t think you want to hear my singing voice.
Come on, you can do it.
Thingmabob, gobbledegook, what’s its face? Whatchamacallit!1
Nice. Good work! I think the one that always comes to mind is the Almond Joy/Mounds one, which is barely a jingle. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t?
Almond Joy’s got nuts, Mounds don’t!2
I forgot about the second couplet there. And this is going to sound so nerdy, but it's so relevant to the book and it's so me - that even as a child, I was like oh that makes sense. You’re not always going to like one thing over the other thing all the time. You know? Sometimes this thing is going to make you really happy and give you pleasure, and sometimes it's going to be a different thing. And we've got you covered either way.
Right. There is an inclusivity that you don't always see in other candies - it’s being presented to you as a dual option! And you also mention this in your book too, certain candies are for certain moods and days and seasons.
And with Almond Joy and Mounds in the book, It's a joke, but I was like this appealed to little baby bisexual Sarah Perry. You can have both. And it’s ok!
I love it. Yeah, you could even have both on the same day if you want to!
Absolutely.
I do feel like you’re more likely to see the singular chocolate/coconut combo in the world. The nut does make it special. Like there’s chocolate coconut clusters in the bulk part of the fancy grocery store.
Right! My favorite weird bulk food store candy is chocolate covered gummy bears, which I think I've gotten at Sprouts specifically.
I don't know if I’ve ever had chocolate covered gummy bears! I am going to try them next time I see them hanging out in the bulk bin.
What do you think about ice cream that's inspired by candy? There's Snickers ice cream bars, there's Twix ice cream bars, I'm sure there's a variety of others. Have any of them ever called to you?
It's like, I respect it as a project. I think I've had a Twix ice cream bar. And my memory of it was that it was pretty fantastic. But I'm really either in the mood for candy or ice cream. I like my ice cream pretty simple with few exceptions. I'm a one flavor ice cream person. Dulce de leche.
A great flavor. Despite growing up in a house that fully embraced Snackwells in the 90s, we would sometimes have Snickers ice cream bars. So they have a nice place in my heart, but otherwise, I'm not getting a crazy ice cream candy.
I'll report back if I have one. Now I have an assignment.
MUG BREAK 🍵
Do you have a favorite mug and why?
This is my favorite mug! Not just because it features boobs. 😹
My dear friend DeJon gave it to me for my birthday. She makes these gorgeous little titty mugs, and they are all different (of course!).
In your book, for your essay on Hershey’s Kisses, you write about developing a crush on a friend after you both ate all the Hershey’s Kisses at an art opening. Do you feel like being queer is tied to candy in some respect?
Absolutely.
I think you wrote that you swooned when you realized she was eating Cadbury Creme Eggs every time she was bored in class?
And I think that line got cut, but she also told me that in that course, she would eat two Cadbury Creme Eggs, and it was in a huge lecture hall, and then she would make out with her girlfriend the whole time. And I was like, I'm so turned on by you. And also you did your educational experience better than I did. In all ways.
A lot of adults tell me that they get to a period in life where they feel like they have to stop eating candy at some point, right? I think that really relates to this idea of queer time. That queer people are not as invested in the time markers of like, you get married, then you have a kid, then you get promoted. Not necessarily. And blessedly being motivated to think outside of that formula also allows you to just retain things that you legitimately love, because you're not performing some certain idea of adulthood.
Totally. The innovation of being queer and realizing you don’t have to follow a pattern for everything the way you’re expected to.
I mean, the great thing about candy culture, at least in America, is that there are no strict rituals tied to candy. There's the mint on the tray after you get the bill or whatever, but candy has never been tied to any of the meals of the day. So, it's always accessible and it's kind of always improvisational, right? it doesn't have to be any sort of systematic thing. So, you're not like working with or against any sort of tradition, right?
I love candy as improv. This is blowing my mind. I've never really thought of it that way.
Last time you were on a book tour, or when you're on a trip, are there certain candies you gravitate toward?
If I'm driving, particularly when I was on tour for After the Eclipse in Maine, which is my home state that I have a complicated relationship to, I would pretty much always get Rolos at the gas station. I find them very comforting.
They're really good for traveling because you can just kind of pop one in your mouth and then be hands free. And you can kind of not finish them and then throw them in your bag. So you start eating them maybe before a reading and then finish after, if they last that long, which is unlikely with me.
Also again with Maine, if I'm up there I try to get Needhams. They are a very Maine candy and are coconut and chocolate. You would love them. They're so good.
I am definitely going to get them if I see them! In your book you organized the essays by candy color, which I LOVE. Do you ever think in terms of color when you want to eat candy? In your mind, are you ever flipping through the colors?
That’s such a good question. If it's hard candy, I always want the red one. No matter what the red flavor is. Red was my favorite color when I was growing up. So I think it's connected to that. I don't know. Red is exciting and fun.
Red is my number one pick as well! Or pink. But really, I’m thinking of the Starburst pink.
Yeah, the pink Starburst is better than the red. So that's an exception for sure.
I feel like now that you've asked me that question, I'm going to be more likely to want to eat based on color, like I want to eat something green today now.
I think I naturally want to eat brighter colors in the summer.
I feel like when it’s the summer it's fun to eat blue things.
Ohhh. Like blue raspberry flavor! Who made that up?
That was one research rabbit hole I didn't go down when I was writing the book. So, I don't know what the deal is with blue raspberry. But I did relate to that tweet that I saw that was like, "blue raspberry is magical realism." And I loved that.
I also love that you write about melatonin sleep gummies, because I went off the deep end last year with Pepto Skittles.
Yes, they're so good.
I had to stop getting them because I just kept eating them. Even when my stomach didn’t hurt!
I did the same thing!
I think all the corporations that have purposely made “medicines” that you have to chew as addictive as possible. Especially in the last few years. They have really figured out the textures. I mean, it’s working on me at least!
Thanks so much for chatting Sarah! Everyone pre-order Sweet Nothings. It’s coming out in February and it’s freaking fantastic.
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<3
At this point I start to sing many candy jingles and terribly embarrass myself.
I cannot believe I am still singing.