Isabella Burley's Deep Reading List

An interview with the founder of CLIMAX Books

Photo by Jacob Lillis

As I wrote in a recent newsletter, September is a time of - and for - fresh starts. In that spirit, Deep Read has had a little makeover and is back on your podcast feeds from today.

The first episode of the refreshed season is with Isabella Burley, founder of Climax Books and CMO of Acne Studios. I’m fairly certain you’ll be familiar with the latter, but if you’ve yet to encounter the former: it’s a self-described “distributor of hard-to-find ephemera, periodicals, erotica, VHS tapes, anthologies and books” – think anything from a Japanese first edition of Madonna’s infamous SEX book to an invitation card for Robert Mapplethorpe’s exhibition, Just Photographs, in Houston, 1979.

I first met Isabella when she was an ambitious 24-year-old editing DAZED magazine in London, and I was an ambitious 25-year-old cultural journalist in LA, where she’d occasionally commission me to interview a musician or actor on the ground. Since then, I’ve admired her impressive career trajectory from afar – and never more so than with the launch of CLIMAX, which I think captures all that is newly exciting about publishing and cultural curation right now.

Please check out the episode on Apple here and Spotify here (or find it wherever you get your podcasts) and refer to the Deep Reading list below. It consists of some direct recommendations from Isabella, in addition to some related suggestions of my own.

More episodes coming very soon!

Phoebe

ISABELLA BURLEY: DEEP READING LIST

Key words: X-Rated, Cult Alt Figures, Gallery Shows + Indie Films, Downtown Culture, Counterculture, Pop Culture, London, NYC

Shame Space

“I feel stupid writing this shit down, but I have to get it out…”