Julia Stiles' Nonfiction Faves Deserve A Spot On Your Bookshelf

It's 1999, and turrets crown the roof of a curiously palatial high school perched above Seattle. Inside, an acerbic girl with combat boots and a bass guitar storms through the hallways. Between English class debates and after-school detentions, Kat Stratford is devouring second-wave feminist texts with the same intensity she uses to dismantle the patriarchy in gym class. While Padua High's official curriculum stuck to Shakespeare and Steinbeck, the syllabus she assigned herself included Sylvia Plath (whose work also lists among Lorde's favorite books, Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvior, and Germaine Greer). There were plenty of things Kat hated, but you wouldn't find feminist theory in her burn book.

Similarly, the actress who brought Kat to life — Julia Stiles — gravitates towards bold, female-driven books. As it turns out, her real-life reading list is every bit as sharp and substantive as her most iconic character's. In an interview with Bustle for their "One Nightstand" series, Stiles shared three of her favorite titles: "Don't Call Me Home," by Alexander Auder (incidentally one of the best picks from Kaia Gerber's book club), "I'll Show Myself Out" by Jessi Klein, and "Desperately Seeking Something" by Susan Seidelman. Fittingly, they're works of nonfiction with feminist zest that Kat herself would have definitely dog-eared and underlined.

Julia Stiles remembers trick-or-treating, parentless, through the Chelsea Hotel with Alexandra Auder's sister — her classmate at the time — lending "Don't Call Me Home" a personal charge. Raised by Warhol Superstar Viva in a one-bedroom whirlwind of performance and neglect, with pet goats and East Village nightlife as scenery, Auder captures the ache of loving a mother who is both magnetic and imposing, of raising a sibling while still a child herself, and the fear that, as a mother now, Auder might be carrying some of that same damage home.

Stiles' second pick, Jessi Klein's "I'll Show Myself Out" touches on similar emotional terrain. Subtitled "Essays on Midlife and Motherhood," the collection explores the strange cocktail of awe, exhaustion, and absurdity that defines early parenthood. Klein's essays are wickedly funny, which offered Stiles a lifeline when she had given birth again. "I had just had my second child, so I was even more kind of overwhelmed," she confessed to Bustle, but "she just made me laugh out loud and feel like, oh, okay, I'm not alone in this experience."

Now that Stiles is directing films herself, it's no surprise that director Susan Seeidelman's "Desperately Seeking Something" (which easily could have ranked among the celebrity memoirs that are actually great, well-written books) struck a chord. A forerunner of indie cinema, Seidelman emerged from the creative chaos of 1970s New York, determined to tell stories about women who flouted convention. "Desperately Seeking Susan" — Seidelman's breakout hit starring Madonna — "was a huge reference for me on 'Wish You Were Here,'" Stiles said. "I was sending clips nightly to our production designer, costume designer." She even slid into Seidelman's DMs to get her thoughts on her 2025 directorial debut.