CHRISSY RYAN

Chrissy Ryan is the founder of BookBar, a bookshop, wine bar, events and social space in London that brings people together through books. Following a career in bookselling and publishing, she opened BookBar Islington in 2021, which was a three-times finalist for London’s Independent Bookshop of the Year. She opened BookBar Chelsea in June. Since founding BookBar, she has hosted events with bestselling authors including David Nicholls and Dolly Alderton, interviewed authors from Douglas Stuart to Jhumpa Lahiri for BookBar’s BookClub, and created a community of book, wine and coffee-lovers. She was a British Book Awards Debut Fiction judge in 2025.