Camila Sosa Villada was born in 1982 in La Falda (C rdoba,
Argentina). She is a writer, actress, and singer, and previously
earned a living as a sex worker, street vendor, and hourly maid.
She holds degrees in communication and theater from the National
University of C rdoba. Her play Carnes tolendas, retrato escenico
de un travesti was selected for the 2010 National Theater Festival
held in La Plata. Her first novel, Bad Girls, won the Premio Sor
Juana Ines de la Cruz and the Grand Prix de l'Heroine Madame Figaro
and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her short
storycollection I'm a Fool to Want You will be published by Other
Press in 2024.
Kit Maude is a translator based in Buenos Aires. He has translated
dozens of classic and contemporary Latin American writers such as
Armonia Somers, Jorge Luis Borges, Lolita Copacabana, and Ariel
Magnus for a wide array of publications and writes reviews and
criticism for several different outlets in Spanish and English
including the Times Literary Supplement, Revista and Otra Parte.
“Beautifully written…a stunning meditation on gender, our bodies,
and the ties that bind.” —NPR
“A fantastical world that is equal parts violent and tender. In
beautifully rendered language, this debut novel…challenges
contemporary ideas of gender, sexuality, and love with the magical
touch of a fairy tale.” —Wall Street Journal, 10 Best LGBTQ+ Books
for Pride Month
“After I finished reading Camila’s story, it kept growing in me…As
a story of gender oppression, Bad Girls (beautifully translated by
Kit Maude) would sound familiar almost everywhere…To record the
travesti experience, no matter how harrowingly painful, as
something precious is [its] purpose.” —Graciela Mochkofsky, The New
Yorker
“[Sosa Villada] is a wise, uncommon, and bewitching storyteller.”
—Esquire, Must-Read Books by Queer Writers
“This fantastical story about the power of chosen family is
entrancing.” —BuzzFeed
“Every so often, a slim book absolutely clobbers you with its
exuberance and beauty—for me, this was that book.” —Torrey Peters,
author of Detransition, Baby
“A beautiful novel, moving, disturbing, raw, and honest. In
skillfully rendered language, charged with poetic energy, it takes
us deep into the world of trans prostitution and explores the
violent and tender bonds that unite the women who inhabit it.”
—Fernanda Melchor, author of Hurricane Season
“Remarkable…Bad Girls is a generational testimony as well as a
personal one. It imagines a future and exorcises a past, being
exceptional for what it promises and for the portrait of a life it
leaves behind.” —Astra Magazine
“There’s a touch of the miraculous, a sort of stop-motion fabulism,
sprouting through the cracks of the Córdoban asphalt in Camila Sosa
Villada’s Bad Girls, imbuing the novel’s ragtag company of trans
deities, miscreants, and sex workers with an enduring sense of
fantastical improbability…a vivid and boisterous translation…a
plaintive vigil that feels like a party.” —Justin Walls, Center for
the Art of Translation Blog
“[A] poignant trans coming-of-age novel.” —Book Riot, Queer Books
from Indie Presses You Definitely Don’t Want to Miss This Year
“An incredible debut novel…Taking a page from writers like Gabriel
Garcia Marquez or Roberto Bolaño, Villada’s work blends a stark
depiction of violence and trauma with a distinctly queer magical
realism.” —Apartment Therapy
“This book cements [Sosa Villada] as a new exciting voice in world
literature.” —She Reads
“Camila Sosa Villada’s Bad Girls blew Argentina’s collective mind
with its exquisite power, tenderness, and riotous imagination.”
—Caro De Robertis, author of The President and the Frog and
Cantoras
“This is an important book: fun, tragic, political, and full of
marvel. It makes you understand the lives of these women and the
wonder and pain of being different and rejected. It’s full of pride
and exquisitely written. It will break your heart and at the same
time make you want to laugh and dance, full of love and sorrow.”
—Mariana Enríquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
“Confrontational, radical, hopeful, Bad Girls does one of the most
important things a book (or a life) can do. It looks at all
the rubble and the dirt and asks: ‘Can we make anything beautiful
from this?’” —Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass
“An exquisite book full of poetry, warmth, and magical, raw
honesty. Gorgeously written stories of lives entwined and
enmeshed in the toughest of spaces, stories that felt so bloody
generous through the act of sharing. Simply beautiful.” —Juno
Roche, author of A Working-Class Family Ages Badly
“A work of searing, confrontational beauty.” —Juno Mac, coauthor of
Revolting Prostitutes
“Without hiding the reality, this novel celebrates trans life with
lyricism and wonder. Bad Girls is a gem to be savored.” —Elle
(France)
“[Sosa Villada] constructs a language that seems to come from
dreams, fairy tales, and adventure novels…a literary
sensation.” —Rolling Stone (Argentina)
“From a life reminiscent of a Pedro Almodóvar film, Camila Sosa
Villada has drawn a novel, an incredible piece of
literature…powerful.” —Vanity Fair (France)
“An homage to sex workers suffused with magic.” —Le Monde
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