Orion Carloto has long blurred the lines between life and literature. A filmmaker, poet and visual storyteller, she first emerged from the quiet folds of a small town in Georgia. Today, she exists in a world of her own making: composed of 35mm stills, diaristic prose, and the scent of old paperbacks left open by the window.
Her work holds space for the romantic, the restless, the ruinously tender. Through poetry collections, personal essays and confessional captions, Carloto has cultivated a following not by chasing virality, but by speaking plainly to longing. Her bookshelf reflects that same instinct of a careful curation of ache and introspection.
Her reading habits encapsulate the restlessness of a mind that prefers to feel a book rather than finish it. As a teenager, Anne of Green Gables stirred her imagination, where now, her shelves are lined with the searing introspection of Clarice Lispector, the precision of Maggie Nelson, and the devastating elegance of Annie Ernaux. Reading, for her, is a kind of communion, a ritual she shares through 'Bible Study', her intimate book club-meets-archive devoted to women who write with bite and brilliance. Recently, she revisited Anaïs Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love while alone in Big Sur, falling back under the spell of a voice she once kept at arm’s length. Now, it’s Who Are You, Dorothy Dean? that’s holding court on her bedside table.
We speak with Orion Carloto below as she shares the books that fractured her, shaped her, and still live with her like ghosts on the shelf.
The last book I read...
A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin. A bit of a hot take, but I’ve always felt somewhat detached from her fiction, especially her short stories. Her voice, to me, resonates most powerfully in her journals. Still, I was surprisingly taken aback by how much I genuinely enjoyed reading this novel! It felt like an echo of the introspective tone in her letters to Henry Miller. I read this while spending some solitary time in Big Sur — fittingly, Henry Miller’s old stomping grounds. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect setting to fall back in love with her.
On my bedside table, I am currently reading...
Who Are You Dorothy Dean? A compilation of her works, edited and brought to life by Anaïs Ngbanzo. Dorothy was a writer, actress, and the first woman ever hired as a fact checker at the New Yorker. Her playground was amongst the bustling crowd of the 1960s underground scene and god damn was she brilliant. She eventually worked for Vogue and later became a film critic within her own publication. I’m determined to get through this before the summer ends, as it would be the perfect installation in Bible Study’s archive!
My favourite book of all time...
This is like asking a mother who her favourite child is, so give me some grace here. But if I had to pick a few, they would be Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Bluets by Maggie Nelson.
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The literary character I most identify with is...
It’s not necessarily a character, but the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath mirrored my thoughts in ways that both ached and softened my troubled mind. I’m not proud of this; if anything, it felt like a brutal revelation to understand the machine working overtime in my mind. When she says, “I desire the things that destroy me in the end” and “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing” ….A dagger penetrates straight through the membrane.
The book that changed my life is...
Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre, and I don’t say this in a positive tone. That book wrecked my mind. It was brilliant, but it was brutal. As an existentialist, trying desperately to think like a nihilist, this took my psyche on a journey I was ill-prepared for. I couldn’t read or think of anything else for three months after the fact. It’s been 5 years since I read that book, and since then, I haven’t read a single book written by a man.
The best book I ever received is...
Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, which was gifted to me by the most wonderful person I know who knows my taste like no other. This would inevitably lead me down the dark path of acquiring the rest of her works and inflicting the most painful obsession with a woman scorned.
The book I would give as a gift is...
This is an answer based on circumstance, but the first book that popped into my mind is My Mother Laughs by Chantal Ackerman
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Growing up, the best book on my bookshelf was...
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I think this series is responsible for feeding the imagination I am plagued with today.
A writer I admire the most is...
Clarice Lispector, the maestro of stream of consciousness. There hasn't been a single person, dead or alive, who could sing their thoughts as fluidly as she does.
My favourite living author is...
Annie Ernaux and Anne Carson.
A book everyone should read at least once is...
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
My favourite reading spot is...
Anywhere by a window with a view of something green.
