[09/09/26] Faet, Berta García: A Little Pretty Personality

Cardboard House Press, paperback

Translated by Kelsi Vanada

Publication Date: September 9, 2026

Publisher Marketing: A wild romp of an epic, this book sings to us of unperceived formations of language and culture. A Little Pretty Personality summons writings from across eras to assay a communal hymn that examines historical trajectories and constructions of romance, love and gender. Its poems reveal a language in constant fracture, which amalgamates wordplay, archaisms, allusions ranging from the Quijote to pop lyrics, and re-writings of poems by Federico García Lorca, César Vallejo and Alejandra Pizarnik. "Squirting multiplications,"this book leaves "stretch marks" on language, as a voice emerges between echoes and caresses of past lives. As a wandering narrator announces, shifting across landscapes, "don't be afraid / of not having the keys."

“Poof”—!—and welcome, reader—to the peculiar magic of Berta García Faet's A Little Pretty Personality, overflowing with playful, subversive feminist wonder. It will grab you by the hand and have you swimming through intellectual and sensual realms alike, with dazzling aplomb, artful moxie, and a witty, flickering tongue. In translation by Kelsi Vanada, you can trust that the translator is in on it. There are faux-neo-archaic overtones: not timeless, but all over time. The uniqueness of this flavor of strident resistance is like no other, the book acting as testament to what it feels like to forge one’s very own relationship to language. To boot: “I’m going to die and that’s magical.”—Sawako Nakayasu, author of Pink Waves

Berta García Faet creates a language all her own. Reading her feels like rubbing a magic lamp and finding something very old, but also new, brilliant, shiny, and even tasty! Kelsi Vanada's translation finds the peculiar, points at the unexpected, and lands at literature.—Violeta Gil, author of Andábamos maravillados