[1][2] She was a member of her country's Generation of '50, which also included Marta Jara [es], Elena Aldunate, Mercedes Valdivieso, and Matilde Ladrón de Guevara.

Her mother was Blanca Walker Larraín and her father was Santiago Pérez Peña, a civil engineer, farmer, deputy for Caupolicán Department (1924; 1926–1930), Minister of Justice (1932), mayor of Magallanes (1937), and president of the Chilean Golf Federation (1949–1951).

He loved his family and left it in the street, lived like a man and died in poverty, leaving me with only a very tender, distant, and unreal memory.

Of sad and austere character...[5]Elisa, who had eight brothers, was educated at the Sacred Hearts College of Providencia [es], about which she later said, "Family affection failed to sweeten the bitter memory I have of my childhood: the school, the classmates, and the teachers were tremendously odious.

[6] At age 19 she married Horacio Serrano [es], an essayist 20 years her elder, the former Minister of Agriculture (1940), a future member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua (1970), and columnist for El Mercurio.

[11] Four novels followed: Chilena, casada, sin profesión, an exhibit of the effects of feminism in Chilean society of the 1920s;[12] Una; En blanco y negro;[13] and A cuál de ellas quiere usted: "mandandirumdirunda", which received a distinction in the 1985 María Luisa Bombal Contest.

[8]The stroke she suffered in 1987 forced her to abandon literary production, without realizing her dream of writing what she considered her masterpiece: "the story of three generations, her mother's, hers, and their daughters.