Dua Lipa’s literary empire is expanding. (Again.)

You may know her as a Grammy winning pop star, best at baiting hooks that keep Barbie in a trance. But these days you’re just as likely to know Dua Lipa for her second job: bookfluencer.

The British impresario founded Service95, a “cultural concierge service,” back in 2023. The service has since blossomed into a hydra of interactive literary content. To date, the Lipa literary empire includes a newsletter, a book club, and a podcast. The latter is hosted by the singer herself.

The service’s main pull is its Monthly Reads feature, starring titles also hand-picked by the hit-maker. On the website, an anonymous support team doles out round-ups and aggregates interview highlights, to fill out the content garden.

And judging from her recommendations, Lipa’s literary taste tends expansive—globally, and genre-wise. Via her many online tributaries, she has made a habit of balancing emerging authors with old hats. A case in point: Lipa once told GQ that she tries to “read a George Saunders book every year.” But on her Instagram, Fitzcarraldo Editions proliferate.

With her Monthly Reads selections, Lipa does a similar swing dance. She often favors off-the-beaten-path prose, shining light on works in translation, story collections, small press books, and plays. This month’s pick, for instance, is Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. A tragicomic drama following an ex-daredevil turned surrogate father who’s forever holding court in the Wiltshire woods.

All this—with all due respect to Reese—is pretty unusual stuff from a celebrity book club. And this week, word came down that the Lipa empire will surprise us yet again.

Lipa has been tapped to steer one of London’s largest literary festivals. This October, she will help program the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival, which celebrates its 19th birthday this year.

With help from Service95, Lipa will “curate a series of events across the festival’s opening weekend…as well as further literary events across the festival.” All TBA. According to Russh, previous curators include heavies like Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, and Tom Hanks.

Whither this dynamic love of letters, and book-club-shaped events? As Lipa told the festival architects, “‘reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life—from being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour.”

That refuge may be less quiet, lately. But talk about a cause célèbre.