The September Edit: Spies, Skinny-Dips, Sea Escapes and Sex

From a story about a real-life Lara Croft working in international espionage to one about a daring prison escape through the Strait of Magellan and more, here are some of this month's favorites.

September has been a good reading month for me. I started and finished a book I’ve been meaning to read forever: Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments; I’m currently in the middle of reading two books I am loving: an ARC of Nikkya Hargrove’s Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found (out October 15!) and Sally Rooney’s latest, Intermezzo (you too?); and I’ve been curling up to a lot of fascinating longform pieces: “The Parasites of Malibu” from The Cut and “‘We’re not as open about sex as we imagine’: Gillian Anderson on pleasure, powerful women, and collecting secret fantasies” from The Guardian, among them. And, as many of you know, I’ve also been curating and editing a bunch of excellent stories lately: some for our recent series about water, The Ever-Present Liquid, some for our ongoing collaboration with Creative Nonfiction, and a few others that we’ve been working on for a minute or two. We wanted to share some of those with you so you can get into them too, if …