Jack Edwards Will Interview Award-Winning Novelist Yasmin Zaher At Chelsea Arts Festival
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2 months ago
We caught up with the internet’s resident librarian ahead of his first in-person book club event in September
From spurring a rise in applications to his alma mater University of Durham college to nudging his newer TikTok followers to pick up the books he has been loving, Jack Edwards has always held influence. But this relationship is ‘symbiotic’, he tells me over tea in Hampstead. ‘I recommend books and discuss my experience with novels, but people will comment and say, “if you liked that, you should read this.”’ And with an international audience at his fingertips, Edwards has pored over international classics from across the globe, books he’d ‘never heard of’ before and now has the pleasure to introduce to his own audience. ‘It’s such a special thing. It has taught me so much about the world that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.’
But what is he reading right now? What is he watching, loving, recommending? Ahead of his very first in-person book club event at Chelsea Arts Festival in September where he will interview Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher we sat down with social media’s most literary star to find out.
MORE: Your Day By Day Guide To The Chelsea Arts Festival
The Culture Radar: Jack Edwards
Hi Jack, let’s talk about your new book club, Inklings. In your introductory video, you talk about how reading is something we do in isolation, but having a reading community is an antidote to that.
Yes, and also antidote to the growth mindset. As my channel gets bigger, it can feel isolating and like I’m getting further away from my audience. In a way, I want Inklings to claw that back. I still want this to feel like a club – like we’re on FaceTime, talking about books together. It’s almost like going back to feeling like a smaller creator and connecting with a smaller group of people.
I’m so happy that so many people were up for it, and signed up on Fable. It was unexpected and joyous to see that many people being excited about Inklings – going out to the bookstore and making an event of buying the first book, Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna, and sitting and sitting and reading it chapter by chapter. It’s magical.
I’ve been a reader for so long, but I have never been in a book club. I find a lot of the book clubs that do exist quite intimidating or exclusive, including online book clubs which often feel like you have to be an Instagram influencer or part of the New York City elite to attend. I just wanted to create a book club that felt like anyone could get involved. And once we start doing more in person events, we will all get to meet likeminded individuals and just nerd out over books.
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What are you excited about right now?
I’m excited about Chelsea Arts Festival, where I will be hosting the first in person Inklings book club event in September. I’m very grateful to have a stage for Inklings and to be able to bring people together.
I also just started a Substack. I’ve been making video content for so many years, and while obviously I write my reviews in order to then make videos about them, I haven’t crafted the written word – that I knew would be read as the written word by my audience – for such a long time. So it’s been really nice to go back to like my blogging roots. The Substack is called Constant Reader, which is an homage to Dorothy Parker, who was a book critic for the New Yorker in the 1920s. She could be so scathing in her reviews, but she would also praise things with such adulation, which really resonates with me. Even though she could be a little bit dark, self deprecating and make a lot of jokes, she also just cared so deeply about the written word and had faith that books can be brilliant, more brilliant books are out there, and we’re on a constant quest to find them.
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There are a few exciting titles coming up in the Inklings book club after Evenings & Weekends. The first live book club will take place in the Saatchi Gallery at Chelsea Arts Festival in September, where you will interview the author live. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, we are going to be discussing The Coin by Yasmin Zaher at Chelsea Arts Festival, which I am so excited about. To amplify a Palestinian writer on such a stage feels important, necessary and urgent.
The Coin is set in New York City, and is about the dirtiness of the city, really – revelling in its filth. The protagonist is a teacher and the book thinks a lot about how we can impact the next generation. The idea that the lessons kids gain the most from in the classroom are often not the things on the curriculum is where Zaher gets creative and imaginative. The protagonist gets involved in a scheme buying Birkin bags and selling them on the black market, so there’s an interesting contrast between her humble job working with children and then discussions of the luxury market and Hermes.
It’s also about city living: the way we occupy and inhabit space, and cohabitate with the people we take our morning commutes with, for example, and the great equalising space of the subway. She talks about how we might have the same rhythm as one percent of the city’s ecosystem, but there are so many people who have a completely different rhythm – they work the night shift, work in a different field, take a different public transport…
I was thinking a lot about ‘sonder’ while I was reading: realising everyone else in the world has as complex an inner life as you do. I think this book embodies that, while also being deeply individual. I think there’s a big surface area for discussion.
In May, Palestinian journalist Yasmin Zaher won the Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut novel, The Coin.
Any more authors on your bucket list to interview?
Sally Rooney is my dream author. One day. Who knows? I know she doesn’t really do interviews, but I’ll keep begging until a restraining order is put in place.
I would love to interview Alan Hollinghurst. He’s one of those legacy writers who I would love to introduce to a younger demographic. R F Kuang, too. I’ve been to a lot of her talks, and going to an R F Kuang talk is like watching a room full of people fall in love with one person.
I think Ocean Vuong is one of the most brilliant writers working today; his most recent book, Emperor of Gladness, feels like a contribution to the canon of great American novels in its ordinariness with extraordinary prose. He is someone we should all be keeping an eye on, and to be able to chat with him would be a dream. Any interview he does is incredible.
Any other authors you’re keeping an eye on as the next big thing?
I really love Saba Sams. She just released her second book Gunk, which I thought was amazing. I might be biased because it’s set in Brighton where I’m from, and it did feel like home in a way. There’s a scene where they go to the pier and eat warm donuts in the pouring rain. That’s what the book feels like to me: a warm donut in the pouring rain.
What are you currently reading?
There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak, who just writes pure poetry. Every single line could be hung in the Louvre – or should I say the Saatchi?! Honestly, the way she has woven every single line with the most exquisite descriptions. She’s a genius. She is another author who has always been at the top of her game for me. She has never faulted.
What are you currently watching?
Other than Love Island? I don’t watch a lot of TV to be honest, but I do think Love Island is like an anthropological thing – a social study of dynamics. Some of the smartest people I know love reality TV, and Elizabeth Day always talks about how she’s a massive Housewives fan!
What are you looking forward to that is not out yet?
Katabasis by R F Kuang, for sure. There are loads of really great book to screen adaptations coming out, actually. Frankenstein, the Emily Henry adaptations, Apple TV’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, The Thursday Murder Club – I’m very intrigued by that – and East of Eden is in the works with Florence Pugh, which I’m so excited about. I think that’s one of the best books ever and I’m so excited for more people, especially young people, to see that story because Steinbeck otherwise feels very curriculum. I actually got that book recommendation from Emma Chamberlain, who made a video about how she got back into reading by picking up her dad’s favourite book.
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What do you think is the best book to screen adaptation?
Catching Fire. The aspect ratio as she enters the arena? I mean, come on. I’ll die on that hill. I’ll die in the area for the whole trilogy.
Favourite film?
The Truman Show.
What’s a book that you always recommend?
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is such a great slim classic that speaks to the human spirit and psyche so masterfully. Somehow every single person who reads it comes away from that book having their world view altered. James Baldwin was one of the greats, and I think my favourite of his works is Another Country, but there is something about Giovanni’s Room that feels so universally captivating and compelling.
Favourite London bookshop?
The London Review bookshop is really lovely. Daunt Books is classic – a book lover’s heaven. I think BookBar is amazing: such a cool space, and encouraging socialisation around books, being able to have a glass of wine and discuss books, is pretty cool. I actually accidentally went there on their opening day during Covid. I had seen something about it online, and I went to check it out, but I didn’t realise it was actually the opening day, and I was one of their first ever customers. I literally had barricade for the BookBar opening. They’ve opened a new location in Chelsea too which is great; I’m so glad to see them thriving.
What’s your favourite place to read?
On the tube. Specifically the Overground – the Mildmay line. It’s so quiet, you’re outside, good lighting and the distance I go to my office is the perfect distance to get a good few chapters in. That’s the best way to spend a morning.
Musician on repeat?
Always Lorde. She raised me. I’m so grateful that every few years she tells me how to think. I can truly bookmark periods of my life by her albums.
Favourite gallery or museum?
I love Tate Britain. It is so special that galleries and museums in London are free. When I was at uni, I was working in Vauxhall one day writing an essay on the pre Raphelites and looking at lots of pictures online. Then I noticed it said they were publicly available to see at the Tate Britain. So I closed my laptop, put it in my tote bag, walked across Vauxhall Bridge to Pimlico and went and looked at those paintings for real, for free. Isn’t that phenomenal?
What’s your coffee order?
Decaf iced oat latte. So ridiculously Gen Z of me.
Go to order at the bar?
Whisky sour. I can make a mean whisky sour. That’s my party trick.
Top London recommendation?
Going to nice restaurants at lunchtime for the set menu. You can try all the best stuff, but it’s so much cheaper.
Guilty pleasure?
I love a romance novel. I love an Emily Henry book.
Jack Edwards’ Inklings Book Club
Jack Edwards will host his Inklings book club at Chelsea Arts Festival on Saturday 20 September 2025 at Saatchi Gallery (Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London SW3 4RY). He will discuss The Coin with author Yasmin Zaher, his second book club pick. Tickets are £12.50pp.
Find the Inklings Book Club on Instagram and sign up on Fable.
