Adult film-maker Erika Lust’s ‘dispatch from the forefront of desire’ signed by Ithaka Press
Ithaka Press has acquired Lust: Pleasure, Performance, Power by award-winning adult film-maker Erika Lust.
UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, were originally acquired by Fritha Saunders from Maria Cardona at Aevitas, and will be published by Sarah Braybrooke, publishing director at Ithaka Press on 5th November 2026.
The book, co-written with Mary Katharine Tramontana, is described as an “inspiring and thrilling dispatch from the forefront of desire”, and a “no-holds-barred account of how, after a conventional suburban upbringing, the author unexpectedly became the world’s foremost director of feminist porn.”
“Deeply honest and personal," adds the publisher, "it argues that by telling the truth about sex, we can change the world.”
The founder of Erika Lust Films, in 2019 the BBC featured Lust in their 100 Inspirational Women list, and her films have been featured at film festivals worldwide.
Born in Sweden and based in Barcelona, Lust said of the book: "Writing Lust was an intimate journey for me, a way of reflecting on the stories I’ve told on screen, and the realities I keep coming up against in my life and my work. It’s about taking back desire, from shame and from expectation, and from stories that were never ours to begin with, so we can start telling our own."
Cardona said: "Working with Erika Lust has been a rare privilege. She is a true cultural force, reshaping how we think about desire and power. In Lust, she brings that same fearless clarity to her own story, exploring sexual autonomy, creativity and the courage to challenge the narratives we inherit. Provocative, intimate and deeply liberating. It has also been a genuine pleasure to work with an editor, Sarah Braybrooke, and everyone at Ithaka Press and the larger Bonnier group who have understood the book so instinctively, championing it with such care and conviction. A joy from start to finish."
Braybrooke said: "It has been inspiring to work with Erika Lust, a legend and one of the few people who can truly claim to be changing the conversation about sex today. Lust is an unputdownable book about creativity, courage and what it means to be a feminist in an age of online misogyny and alienation."
