Get Intimate With Gillian Anderson

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Let’s Talk About Sex, Scully

Gillian Anderson is probably so tired of people referring to her as Agent Scully–I was big into The X-Files and truly cannot help myself. I am also here for her new book all about women’s pleasure, Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous. In a New York Times profile, the Sex Education star talks about shame, self-loathing, and overcoming the external pressures that get in the way of pleasure. The book collects women’s anonymous fantasies gathered by Anderson from followers (I should make clear that these are not random slides into her DMs, but communications from people who responded to her requests for submissions). It’s great to see that she strove for inclusivity as well.

Well-Read Black Girl Festival Lineup Announced

This year’s Well-Read Black Girl Fest announced an exciting lineup of literary names you might know, including Nikole Hannah-Jones (Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and The 1619 Project author), Edwidge Danticat ( Everything Inside), and Safiya Sinclair ( How to Say Babylon). The event, themed New Visions in Storytelling, celebrates “radical perspectives and groundbreaking narratives on our bookshelves” and will be held on Saturday, October 26, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. Glory Edim ( Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me) is doing great things in the book world with WRBG–I highly recommend checking out the event and the work.

Booktopia!

No, Booktopia is not a bookish amusement park as I first hoped assumed when I read mention of it. It’s an assortment of book crowdfunding projects run under one umbrella on Backerkit by a group of writers and artists. I can’t remember seeing the likes of something like this before and I’d have to spend more time than I can fit into the morning to get a full view of the what and why, but I did find a video where two folks, Katie Lockwood and Rella B Books, talk about how Booktopia is their collab. It’s been running since September 5 and ends September 26, and they already have about $459K in funds raised–not too shabby, self-publishers, not too shabby at all!

Books Win at the 2024 Emmys

Find out which adaptations took home the biggest prizes at last night’s Emmy Awards, including the adaptation that broke the all-time record for a single season of TV. I have so much viewing to catch up on, y’all…

---