Cruz Prize for her life's work. Among her works are "Celebrar a la mujer como a una pascua" (1967), "Canon de alcoba" (1988), "En estado de memoria" (1990), "La letra de lo mínimo" (1994), and "La madriguera" (1996).

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She has also received the Boris Vian Award (1989) and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and English.
 

A translator herself, she has translated numerous works by French authors, and writes regularly for Argentine and Mexican newspapers.
 

“Mercado is a deft storyteller and phrasemaker [...] The book is full of sensuous, luxuriant, lapel-grabbing writing, exciting to read. [...] She has taken up the challenge of reconstructing the unimaginable and found a way to create a state and statement of memory. I was here, the voice says. This is what it was like. Come with me.”— Women's Review of Books