How The Read Room Is Flipping the Narrative on Book Clubs
Meet Kya Buller and Sophia Wild, the duo proving that reading can, in fact, be a night out.
The literary world can, at times, feel a little siloed: the intense intellectual pursuit of a traditional book club on one side, and the spontaneous, late-night conversations among friends on the other. But for Kya Buller and Sophia Wild, the Manchester-based co-founders of The Read Room, that line has been joyfully blurred. What began seven years ago as a private ritual (swapping their favorite reads between “ricocheting shots of tequila in a shadowed corner of a bar”) has turned into a sold-out, culture-shifting phenomenon. They recognized the need to remove the “stuffiness” and homework associated with classic literary circles, creating instead a high-energy event where authors come to the audience, share their work, and empower attendees to connect over a shared passion. What results is an authentic, accessible, and now widely recognized approach to literature that is taking their concept across the UK and beyond.
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Buller and Wild share their story thus far, their current must-reads and unique way of modernizing the traditional book club experience below.
On The Spark and The New Model
Kya Buller: After years of swapping reading reflections, we decided to attend an actual book club together at the beginning of 2025, and on the bus journey back we discussed how we would bring our own book club to life. We decided that we would turn the concept on its head and have the authors come to us to share excerpts of their work and people could take the book home and read it at their own pace… It’s literature-meets-late-nights, if you will.
On Community, Culture and Going Viral
Sophia Wild: People are really crying out for more literature-centric, creative and cool nights out, which is something we gambled on but ultimately were proven right about! I think ultimately we are creating an in-person community, which in and of itself is a rare thing in the age of TikTok and being chronically online. We’ve worked hard to ensure people can talk freely about literature, a subject that can sometimes be relegated as being “intellectual” or “inaccessible,” and we encourage people to treat it as a fun night out and a chance to meet people rather than a solely intellectual pursuit… We want you to be comfortable and open and potentially make new friends and meet new people. We’ve been totally thrilled to see, at each event, a range of genders, ages and backgrounds in attendance. It’s important to us that everybody knows they’re welcome. Also, so many people come alone and end up making friends. There’s a group of solo attendees who now go Salsa dancing together each week and it just makes our hearts soar.
On Curation and Recognition
KB: We have been so lucky in that a lot of publishers have reached out to us, I think they understand that we have created a unique space in which the authors are able to showcase their work in person in front of an enthusiastic and dedicated audience.
SW: We were featured in the Guardian, given a segment on BBC Radio, landed our first partnership deal, in collaboration with CUPRA, and been profiled by Manchester media behemoths MCR Finest, MCR Wire and The Flaneuse. And we recently landed our first London-based residency, which kicks off in January 2026, so we’ve been busy…
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On The Future
KB: We feel like we’ve found our feet with presenting now as a duo and (hopefully) we’re pretty good at it so we’d love to lean into that more across a range of events, outside of The Read Room. Within it, though, we want to take it across the country and eventually global. We also do also mention a dream of hosting SNL, which doesn’t seem like a total impossibility. We’ve also spoken about our dream collaborations… Mine is Manchester United, and Sophia’s is adidas. We shall see.
Their Must-Reads
KB: Bad Habit by Alana Portero… This book was given to me as a gift by a summer romance which then hurt me so badly I was unable to pick it up for a while (I am so dramatic.) But I will eternally be grateful that I was introduced to this book… One quote is: “How could something so beautiful, something so personal and so extraordinary to share with the world, something that vibrated with pure joy, be perceived with such hostility out there?” I mean. Good God.
SW: To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage… We were lucky enough to host Eliana at a Read Room event we did in partnership with Penguin Random House’s imprint, Doubleday. Eliana read an incisive excerpt of her debut novel, which centred around a scene of the novels protagonist, Steph, waxing lyrical about her feelings towards one of her classmates. Ultimately, Steph wants to become the world’s first Cherokee astronaut, which in and of itself is such a dazzling premise. Keep an eye out for its UK publication in early 2026.
For more gift ideas, read about the best coffee tables books for this holiday season.
