Coartada is an independent literary imprint publishing fiction and theater in English and Spanish. The name means alibi: the version of events we offer others, and more often ourselves, to explain what we did and what we wanted.

Its novels, stories and plays live in the space between who we believe we are and who we turn out to be. Darkly funny and occasionally devastating, they belong to a literature that refuses to confuse seriousness with solemnity.

Everyone needs an alibi.