Longlisted for the National Book Award

Winner of the Cercador Prize

Indie Next Pick

"The Queen of Swords, presented here in a lyrical translation by Christina MacSweeney, astounded the committee. Jazmina Barrera's study on Elena Garro, a maligned pioneer of magical realism, defies convention and embraces contradiction. This is a book of reversals and research, an unwaveringly brilliant portrait of a complex and undone life, captured in art and destruction, love and pain, faith and persecution."--Cercador Prize jury

"Barrera doesn't hide her joys, her frustrations, her self in the writing and as a result, pushes the idea of biography forward . . . . Form-busting, playful, and inviting."--Literary Hub, Favorite Books of 2025

"Barrera relates Garro's life on her own terms wherever possible, setting out a string of wild events that often reads like a thriller. . . .The Queen of Swords is a refreshingly honest biography, one which is both example of and meditation on its form."--The Times Literary Supplement

"A prismatic portrait of an elusive woman."--Kirkus

"Barrera's poetic and searching prose, her description of the experience of doing archival research, her comfort with her own uncertainty around the very facts of Elena's life--together articulated loving an artist from a different time better than any other book I've read. . . . The clarity of Barrera's fascinations inspires me to love even more completely than I already do. Her books teach me how to love and how to live with loss. I loved it I loved it I loved it!"--Ellis Breunig, Page 2 Books

"Needlework is often depicted as a peaceful activity: feminine, unthreatening, decorative. Yet in Jazmina Barrera's understated and lovely debut novel, Cross-Stitch, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney, embroidery is revealed to be as quietly brutal as young womanhood, despite the shroud of innocence society often places over both."--The New York Times

"Reflections on youth, the passage of time, and the meaning of female friendship....[Jazmina Barrera] blend[s] Sally Rooney-esque interpersonal chaos with a clean, graceful prose style."--Vogue

"Stitches, secrets, shame: When Jazmina Barrera's first novel translated into English, Cross-Stitch, hits shelves in November, read it. Barrera stitches a female coming-of-age story together with a feminist history and theory of embroidery, and it consumed my entire day."--Chicago Review of Books

Praise for Linea Nigra

"When interpreting pregnancy through art, no starting point is better than the musings of the Mexican writer Jazmina Barrera....To call [Linea Nigra] a memoir would be reductive--it includes so many references to fine art, literature, and history that it functions almost as an anthology or a masterfully curated museum of child-rearing." --The Atlantic

"Linea Nigra is a beautiful and lucid essay about the journey across motherhood seasons - pregnancy, childbirth, and first months of parenting. Far from mythologizing motherhood as an idealized state, Linea Nigra sheds light on the complex and contradictory nature of gestation: a state crossed by terrors, but also by hopes and love; a biological and spiritual mystery that concerns all human beings, as individuals and as a society." --Fernanda Melchor, The Guardian

"Clear-eyed and poetic...[A] generous, openhearted project inviting readers to discover what is often hidden away, unseen." --Los Angeles Review of Books