Pitzilein Books – Miss Read

Pitzilein Books

Pitzilein Books was founded in 2016. We have published books in a wide range of formats, in topics such as literature, visual art, and philosophy. Idalia Sautto, Pitzilein's founder, is an editor, art historian, and writer with editorial experience in larger cultural institutions such as Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, a magazine dedicated to the promotion of up-and-coming Mexican artists, and one of the Mexican Ministry of Culture's main projects. Pitzilein Books distributes its books in libraries in Mexico City, Bogotá, Chicago, and Barcelona, among other cities. It participates in the active circuit of book fairs throughout Mexico, including the Guadalajara International Book Fair, which is the largest in the Americas. Pitzilein is also active in Mexico's art book circuit, including participation in Index Art Book Fair 2020 and other similar events. On average, Pitzilein books participates in 5 book fairs per year (with the obvious exception of the Covid pandemic time). The quality of our press's catalogue and production values has motivated several larger institutions to seek collaborations or co-publishing schemes with Pitzilein books. The list includes international organizations such as Gemany's Goethe Institut (Mexican chapter), which put out the book "Blickwinkel: momento futuro." At the national level, Pitzilein books has partnered with Mexico's National University (UNAM) in the publication of philosophy books in translation. Large foundations such as the Fundación Arte Contemporáneo Jumex have sponsored Pitzilein publishing projects.
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
Jorge Sosa, It Was A Dark And Stormy Night, Pitzilein Books, 2022 © Jorge Sosa

Maybe you don't remember but in several strips, Snoopy appears on top of his doghouse with a typewriter, doing his novel. Many years ago, I learned that someone had transcribed those strips and put the text together. I found it fun to translate it and make a fiction in the footnotes, whose protagonist was the translator. I think I always liked Charlie Brown because his characters are very cute and very sad, except for Snoopy. At the time I wrote "A Dark Stormy Night" I was sad too and the book is mainly about that, about not being well, and about a boy's relationship with his dog.

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Water Spells
Adriana Salazar, Water Spells, Pitzilein Books / Graham Foudation, 2022 © Adriana Salazar

Water Spells attest to the multiple and ubiquitous nature of water. From their different dimensions—articulated, tense, or in conflict—the text and the images gathered here constitute a key for deciphering, critiquing, and even defending against the asymmetries in the diverse conceptions of water we employ or that are foisted on us. In this sense, they are also a tool to inhabit the quintessential contradiction of metropolitan water’s courses: it is one and many, it’s close and distant, an intimate bond to the territory and a simultaneous extraneousness. We who drink and pour water throughout this city are also a part of this turbulent cycle, and thus the contradiction courses through us as well: the water we drink runs through our bodies and lives in them. The present invocations may suggest, if we allow them, a calling to the water inside us, so we may connect with that water continuum that had been withheld from us.

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Disco de titanes
Sini Silveri, Disco de titanes, Pitzilein Books, 2022 © Sini Silveri

Published in 2020 by the Poesia publishing house, Titaanidisko by Sini Silveri had a praiseworthy reception among Finnish critics, who highlighted its carnivalesque and affective tone. With fast language, Silveri reveals the dream drive that underlies urban order, Nordic landscapes and domestic objects. This phantasmagoria, accompanied by a clear and postmodern vision of nature, made Disc of the Titans a peculiar case in Finnish contemporary poetry.



With the support of the Finnish Literary Translation Center, FILI, the Mexican publisher Pitzilein books published the Spanish translation in August 2022. In this launch into the Spanish-speaking world, Sini Silveri, translator José Luis Rico and editor Idalia Sautto will discuss the process of writing, translating and editing the book.

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