Pink Shorts Press acquires Arantza Garcia Ferrand’s “Cotton-filled”

Pink Shorts Press has acquired world rights to Cotton-filled, a memoir by Arantza Garcia Ferrand.

The publisher describes the work as “an intimate coming-of-age memoir in images and words, inverting the colonial concept of archive through family photographs and fragmented memories”.

Garcia Ferrand is based in Adelaide and was the 2025 Australian Poetry Slam Champion. Her writing “often grapples with her experience as a queer Peruvian woman in Australia”, the publisher said.

Garcia Ferrand said, “Each immigrant finds their own way to deal with the permanent goosebumps that diaspora leaves on their skin. This book was mine. An exploration of what it means to decolonise your own identity, it is a vulnerable attempt at collaging the fragmented memories of growing up brown in Australia. It almost feels like I’m inviting everyone into my mother’s living room, and we forgot to tidy up.”

Publishers Margot Lloyd and Emily Hart said, “We are in awe of the power of Arantza, a poet who can move a whole stadium to tears or laughter. Fresh from winning the Australian Poetry Slam National Championship, she has transferred her talents from performance to page with electric results. Cotton-filled is a memoir in collage – of words and images – that is compulsively readable, intimate and rich in meaning.”

Pink Shorts Press plans to publish Cotton-filled in March 2027.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions