A Cartonera publisher located on the island of Florianópolis, in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, Katarina Kartonera emerged out of academic research on Cartonera publishing carried out by Evandro Rodrigues.
In 2008, he was an undergraduate student at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Shortly after, Rodrigues decided to start his own Cartonera publishing venture, and began issuing his first titles in 2009.
In 2011, Rodrigues defended his Master’s thesis, Trajeto Kartonero[The Way of Kartonera]. He later published it in a Cartonera edition.
Dirce Waltrick do Amarante and Sérgio Medeiros, award-winning writers and Rodrigues’s professors at UFSC, sit on the Editorial Board of Katarina Kartonera.
Katarina Kartonera defines itself as “a (non-partisan) collective of a literary nature, with a borderless, autonomous mindset, without any official institutional sponsorship, aiming to publish contemporary literature and narratives.” (Katarina Kartonera, n.d.)
Books are often produced in collaborative workshops.
In 2020, the University of Alberta Library acquired 35 titles, the entire catalog of Katarina Kartonera published up until that point. They are housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections.