‘Funny, sexy and a bit weird’: inside the new wave of literary parties
Fancy getting poetry performances and DJ sets all in one place? A growing number of event organisers across the UK are putting their own spins on literature readings – and there are queues out the doorOn a Saturday evening in London’s Notting Hill, a large crowd of moderately tipsy young people are spilling into a tailor’s shop on Portobello Road. A passerby could easily assume they were walking past a fashion pop-up attracting a stylish herd of fanatics. But they’d be wrong. The buzzing crowd is here for a live reading event, and they’re eager with energy and anticipation.Soho Reading Series began in the summer of 2023 and was founded by Tom Willis, a writer and PhD student. He wanted to make a “scene where anyone could turn up, party, and have a killer time with literature as the centre,” he tells me over an extra-dry martini a couple of hours before one of the events. Continue reading...
