Belleza y Felicidad: Selected Writings of Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Pavon

Poetry. Fiction. Art. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Stuart Krimko. As the Argentine economy went into freefall at the end of the last millennium, two young women—Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Pavón—met and became friends. Fernanda, a painter and poet who also publishes fiction under the nom de plume Dalia Rosetti, and Cecilia, a poet and translator, soon forged the radically creative partnership now known as Belleza y Felicidad. As Belleza emerged into a movement and inspired a community, Fernanda and Cecilia broadcast its ethos—"a complete program of resistance," as César Aira once described it—through a prodigious output of poetry and fiction. Now a generous selection of this work is available in English for the first time. With an introduction by translator Stuart Krimko, this authoritative volume transmits the urgency and passionate feeling at the heart of one of the most exciting artistic and literary movements to emerge from South America in recent decades.

"BELLEZA Y FELICIDAD, both the place and the idea, live on in the irresistible pleasures of Cecilia's and Fernanda's poems and stories. Upon revisiting them now I find that they are in fact high-precision lenses for seeing the daily utopias of reality."—César Aira

"Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Pavón are legendary writers, domesticating the world in order to make it the subject of their 'domestic' poetry. They are voracious and understand everything. Stuart Krimko's translations capture the totalizing effect of their writings beautifully."—Chris Kraus

"This book is a paradise of love. Eminent, charismatic, & frolicsome, it's also the magic transcription of a friendship, i.e. a romance (several!), the kind I spent my misspent youth envying in Montaigne & La Boetie. Ecstatics of childlike candor & polymorphous grace, Fernanda Laguna & Cecilia Pavón are absolute women, guileless dreamers, saints in sneakers, on sidewalks, in jail, in Zara, on buses, in nightclubs, in bed, about to turn 29, & 37, & 7. I can't wait for everyone in america to read this book & never be the same again."—Ariana Reines