By Bonnie Eissner
Anyone who thinks reading books is going the way of the dodo bird would have been heartened by the turnout at Kelly Chervin’s Lit Club event last Tuesday night.
About 30 people filled the West 87th Street Park and Garden to read and chat about books at an aptly named “Rest and Read,” one of the weekly events Chervin holds at venues across the city.
Chervin, a former middle school teacher who has lived on the Upper West Side since 2019, started Lit Club in March 2025 after turning her Instagram account into a Bookstagram — a subcommunity of the social media platform whose members share book-related content — and noticing that, even in a highly polarized time, people were willing to open up about literature.
Lit Club’s mission, she said, “is to create a safe space for meaningful connection with books at the center.” With nearly 35,000 Instagram followers, over 9,500 Substack subscribers, and carefully curated events that draw fans and rave reviews, Chervin is evidently succeeding.
“I built Lit Club as a literary community for the culturally curious,” Chervin said, and she speaks with conviction about the values she set for her community.
“We believe books create kind of a mirror to ourselves and a window into society,” she said, describing the first value. The second is belonging. “Books are for everyone,” Chervin said. “I want Lit Club events to be inclusive of folks of all backgrounds, ages, and experiences.” Finally, beauty. She seeks beautiful spaces, such as parks, cultural spaces, and restaurants, that give books the dignity they deserve.
The garden on West 87th Street, a regular site for her Rest and Reads, is just such a setting.
Seated at tables and in nooks amid trees and vines just beginning to show their fall colors, participants chatted over snacks before Chervin welcomed everyone and gave instructions: 40 minutes of quiet reading followed by guided discussion. The events, announced monthly, are themed, and Chervin follows the zeitgeist. September’s theme was AI in society; October’s is horror.
As participants read, Chervin set the mood, playing classical music from a curated Spotify playlist. When the reading time was up, she prompted conversation, inviting people to share not only what they were reading but their “hot takes” on new literature.
The event drew first-timers and returnees, many of whom Chervin knew and called on during the discussion. Many were reading the latest literature, but some brought classics. Several cracked open “The Oracle’s Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult,” which Chervin handed out as part of her cross-promotion of a talk by the author, Harrison Hill, hosted by Belletrist book club.
Giovanna Becker found the event online that morning and decided to join, as she was free and the weather was beautiful. She brought Ivan Turgenev’s novel “Smoke,” which she was already deeply into, and finished that evening. “It’s really beautiful in every sense,” she said of the book.
At the same table, Alexandra Ten was reading “Fallow,” Sarah Anderson’s satirical debut novel, out this September. Ten has been a Lit Clubber since coming to one of its first events in April 2025 at The Old Yew Plant Shop on the Upper West Side. “I’ve made so many good friends through Lit Club,” Ten said.
Before discovering Lit Club, she sampled other book clubs in the city, but couldn’t connect with people. Chervin, she said, is especially good at mediating discussions.
Ten also finds Lit Club refreshingly diverse. While most attendees are women – about 80%, according to Chervin – Ten has met many from different backgrounds and ethnicities, which is important to her as she is mixed race – Asian and Armenian. “A lot of events that I went to with other book clubs were not as representative,” Ten said.
She especially enjoys Lit Club’s monthly author talks and even encouraged Chervin to feature her former college professor Johanna Fernández, author of “The Young Lords: A Radical History,” about the Puerto Rican-led, far-left group, active in New York in the 1970s. “It was really, really special,” Ten said of the talk Fernández gave in October, less than a year before she died from cancer.
Chervin’s mother is Puerto Rican. Her father is Jewish. Growing up as a white Latina in Westchester, she had lots of questions about her identity. Books offered answers.
“I saw myself in literature, and it helped me not feel so othered in what was, at the time, a very homogeneous school,” Chervin said.
Following college, she taught middle school English and social studies in New Orleans. She then helped found a charter middle school in the Bronx. Once again, she saw the power books had to “create spaces for kids to learn more about themselves, the world, develop empathy, be vulnerable,” she said.
After about 10 years in education, she moved into educational technology, designing skill-building products for adults at Multiverse for three years until she was laid off last year, and turned her Lit Club side gig into a full-time job. She now makes money from events, ranging from free book swaps to literary dinners that cost between $130 and $150; Substack subscriptions; sponsorships by publishers and venues; and, recently, consulting for other book clubs.
For most of her time in New York, she has lived on the Upper West Side.
“What I love about the Upper West is it really feels like a home,” she said, “and it holds my interests.”
She frequents the St. Agnes Library and has held Lit Club events at neighborhood spots from restaurants to bookstores to some of the more undiscovered places in Central Park.
As Chervin closed her event on Tuesday, she plugged the author talk with Belletrist, and she urged, “Before you leave, please grab each other’s contacts. The whole point of tonight was to not only rest but make bookish connections.”
Phones came out, and numbers were exchanged. Then people walked in small groups into the dark, quiet neighborhood and back to their busy lives.
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