On a Saturday night in London’s Notting Hill, a big crowd of reasonably tipsy younger individuals are spilling right into a tailor’s store on Portobello Street. A passerby might simply assume they had been strolling previous a trend pop-up attracting a trendy herd of fanatics. However they’d be incorrect. The buzzing crowd is right here for a reside studying occasion, they usually’re keen with vitality and anticipation.
Soho Reading Series started in the summertime of 2023 and was based by Tom Willis, a author and PhD pupil. He wished to make a “scene the place anybody might flip up, occasion, and have a killer time with literature because the centre,” he tells me over an extra-dry martini a few hours earlier than one of many occasions.
Reside literature readings are, in fact, nothing new. Salons, bookshop readings, poetry slams and open mics have been fixtures of literary cultures for many years. Nevertheless, currently this custom has been revitalised, with occasions just like the Soho Studying Collection cropping up all around the nation.
Willis was impressed by the cultural heyday of Soho within the 80s and 90s, an period when writers and literary varieties coalesced within the boozy backrooms of personal members’ golf equipment. Not like its title, the Soho Studying Collection migrates with every occasion to completely different venues throughout the town – from a Grade II-listed pub in Harringay to a Victorian Anglican church on Ladbroke Grove.
“For those who’re a printed author, you would possibly go to your publishing home’s Christmas occasion, and everybody simply is aware of one another there. That’s the skilled literary scene, after which we’re the unprofessional literary scene.” Willis says with a smile.
“Scene” is a phrase utilized by most of the occasion’s attendees – however solely ever whereas miming air quotes. I suppose it’s because the phrase implies an air of pretentiousness and exclusivity. In actuality, these occasions are unassuming and entice a various and increasing crowd. There’s no immovable barrier, secret password or perhaps a ticket to enter – anybody can stroll in.
“It’s a celebration of like-minded individuals who care about literature. In order that’s why it’s such a great occasion, as a result of everybody cares about the identical factor, and everybody’s not there for his or her profession. They hang around with individuals who like books and have one thing good to share,” says Willis.
Soho Studying Collection is only one vein in a rising net of reside studying occasions. The viewers is younger in contrast with the typical literature competition crowd and it attracts a religious congregation of each literary and party-curious people.
“Some folks come for a celebration. Some folks come for readings. Folks usually find yourself staying for the factor that they hadn’t deliberate to return for,” says Sophie Barshall, editor of London-based quarterly DIY arts and tradition newspaper The Toe Rag, which additionally hosts common reside readings.
Inside the tailor’s store on Portobello Street, the readings start an hour late. There is no such thing as a microphone; every reader flicks by way of printed sheets of paper or scrolls by way of the notes app on their telephone, trying to venture their voice over shuffling, mumbles, momentary laughter and heckling. The store – often populated by folks looking for cashmere socks – is full to capability. The viewers has leaked out on to the pavement, and a younger girl subsequent to me is FaceTiming a buddy outdoors to allow them to hear what’s happening.
What’s being learn aloud is unrestricted by theme or style. The readings leap from excerpts of quick tales printed in Granta journal to a five-star Google assessment of the 2007 Pixar movie Ratatouille.
The general public I communicate to have“by no means been to one thing like this earlier than however got here throughout the occasion by way of social media or a author’s Substack and determined to present it a strive. Avid readers and newbie writers make up round half of these in attendance, however a good portion of individuals inform me they’re there purely as a result of they like the thought of being thought of literary.
Because the studying ends and we transfer from one native pub to the subsequent, a younger man drunkenly confesses that “he doesn’t even benefit from the readings that a lot” – he simply involves “meet the kinds of people that would take pleasure in it”.
“It’s most likely not for everybody,” Willis says. “It’s boring until you’re actually engaged in it. It’s free and open to everybody, however it does self-select. However that’s the scene – that’s why literature is so good for scene making.”
In Glasgow, a lot of studying collection reminiscent of thi wurd and Shrill have emerged lately. Waterwings Press, which has been internet hosting reside studying occasions within the metropolis’s south aspect since 2020, was arrange by Leo Bussi, who moved to Glasgow wanting to find its artwork scene and meet completely different folks. “I believed the easiest way to try this is to message somebody on Instagram and say, ‘Hey, do you need to learn for my studying?’” he says.
Every Waterwings occasion is made up of readings by 5 writers: some are seasoned performers, others are first-time readers. Modern poetry is probably the most represented style alongside what Bussi loosely defines as “artwork writing” – a combination of autofiction, artwork and literary criticism.
“It’s like taking a chunk of spaghetti and throwing it towards the wall to see if it’ll stick,” he says. “There’s an improvisation to the night, which could be extremely traumatic but in addition gratifying as a result of when it really works, it actually works.”
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Though there are many folks with formal writing {qualifications} at these occasions, and I spot a lot of attendees sporting the go-to literary standing image, a Daunt Books tote bag, this new method to reside readings feels separate from the world of mainstream publishing. If something, these are areas particularly curated to rail towards it.
In commerce journal the Bookseller’s 2025 survey of publishing salaries, 73% of respondents stated they had been center class and 86% that they had been white. As a result of so many publishing employees members “come from the identical background”, they “image the reader as somebody like them and other people they know,” says Rachel Connolly, a author and common on the London reside studying circuit.
Connolly co-hosts a collection referred to as New Work alongside her buddy and author, Isis O’Regan, a devoted house for fiction writers to litmus-test new, unpublished work with an viewers. The collection debuted final July; earlier readers embrace authors Eliza Clark, Gabriel Smith and Nicole Flattery.
“Our supreme reader is admittedly good at writing, humorous, attractive and a bit bizarre, a bit on the market. Within the digital age, writers most likely know one another on-line from Twitter and Instagram, however it’s means nicer to return and meet folks and hearken to their work, hear their voice and really put a physique to the impression that you’ve of somebody,” Connolly says.
“However perhaps individuals are additionally making an attempt to get laid,” she provides, half jokingly.
This appears to be a typical theme – Willis usually begins a Soho Studying Collection occasion by jokily suggesting that viewers members get with somebody they discover engaging – and is another excuse that attending them feels extra like going to a music gig than a literature fixture.
“It’s meant to be fulfilling,” says poet and musician James Massiah, whose east London studying collection Adult Entertainment is all about “occasion poetry”. His nights sometimes start with audiences sitting on the ground listening to performances by poets and rappers, earlier than a DJ takes to the decks and the dancing begins.
“What do folks like at events? They like dancing, they like assembly somebody they fancy, they like listening to some tunes they usually like getting it on,” he says. “I would like the writing to replicate that, and I would like the temper to replicate that as properly.”
“Any reside literature occasion is about bringing work into the world and sharing it with others,” agrees Joey Frances, a poet and organiser of the long-running studying collection Peter Barlow’s Cig based mostly in Manchester, named after the chainsmoking character from Coronation Road.
“You’re listening to each other, you’re feeding again from each other, you’re hanging out, you’re having enjoyable.”
Enjoyable is the important thing to the success of those occasions, Massiah thinks. “It’s not a lecture. It’s just like the spirit of dance or dub sound methods the place folks congregate for the music. It’s like that, however individuals are congregating for the phrases.”
