When times are tough, businesses seek new and innovative ways to collaborate. Fish Island Books, the new bookshop in Hackney Wick, is a template for this ethos: it has teamed up with waterfront pizza restaurant and gallery Unlock, to form a partnership which acts as a growing hub for the local community.

The pop-up opened in November of last year and has already melded well into the industrial space. The bookshelves divide the room in a way that feels light and unobtrusive, while plants and artwork help to maintain an airy chic in place.

Bookshop and restaurant function separately, but the two overlap in mutually beneficial ways. The food side of the room is used to host author talks and book clubs. Equally, first-time visitors to the bookshop can be seen becoming first-time clients of the restaurant.

“Unlock is focused on building a community around art and food”, says Agatha Yerbury, owner of Fish Island Books. “Adding books to that felt quite natural.”

An East London local for 20 years, Agatha had the desire to bring cultural value to the area after a career in the corporate world. And after spending her soul-searching hours wandering around bookshops, she had an epiphany - to start her own.

“There are a lot of people who are looking for a place to come to connect with others, but not necessarily around going to a pub and drinking,” she says. “It’s important to find these places where anyone can come, to connect and talk. Bookshops are a nice way to do that – you always have the focal point which is the literature.”

Hackney Wick, with its creative culture, seemed like the perfect place to land, and a few twists of fate soon brought Agatha together with the Unlock team.

“I originally thought I would take just a little corner of the restaurant,” she laughs. “They had this table they would use for events and parties that wasn’t really doing much, as it was quite a cold little cold corner. But when we came to install our setup, the team insisted on making the store more of a feature of the whole restaurant.”

When the green light was given for such a devoted space, Agatha dashed to Ikea for bookshelves, “ordered a thousand books” from publishers and wholesalers, browsed late into the night for deadline-day additions, and - within only two weeks - the pop-up was complete.

But the challenges of running a bookshop also inevitably appeared fast, too. “The first month and a half before Christmas I was doing everything for the first time, making lots of mistakes, stock going missing, you name it. Some customers of the restaurant didn’t immediately know it was a bookshop, and brought books to their table while they were eating.”

The prolonged closure of the Roach Point Bridge (now, happily reopened for the summer ahead) also reduced the foot traffic to Fish Island, making finding the fledgling shop even more difficult.

“A lot of it is just getting the word out. Of the customers who have come in, I’ve been overwhelmed by the support. I’ve had people say they’ve seen it in residents’ WhatsApp groups, which is so lovely as someone has obviously decided off their own back to recommend the shop to more people.”

This example of word of mouth seems to represent the communal essence of Fish Island Books, while Agatha’s events all focus on bringing people together, too. The staple, the Book Supper Club, not only harnesses the local community, but helps to bind it.

“There were three people who had lived in the same building and they’d never spoken to each other before,” recalls Yerbury. “This is why I’m doing it. People are looking for ways to connect; it’s just finding those ways of doing it, and the book clubs are low risk – as you’ve got something to talk about. You don’t have the silence at the table.”

Another literary-based innovation is the wine and poetry night: “The concept is, you get your ticket, you get given a poem and a glass of wine, and you enjoy them both. They will be paired with each other, and we can discuss why the poem might go with that wine. We’re going to evolve it, and get poets involved, too.”

Agatha is building her schedule of author visits, which just saw bestselling author Adele Parks MBE in April, with Alex Kadis in May. The event includes the typical talk and Q&A, but is untypically then followed by dinner and drinks with the author. This symbiotic approach breaks down the distance between author and audience, allowing intimate insight for the readers while giving authors detailed feedback on their work.

If her events are communal, there is also something personal about Agatha’s approach, especially to her book selection. “It became a manifestation of my personality. Every book on the shelf is one I love, or is written by an author I really like, or is on a topic I am really interested in. There is a lot of feminist literature, there is a lot of stuff on climate, there is a reasonable amount on political history. A lot of memoirs on people I think are great. I hope this will evolve, but people can also come in and order whatever they want. If you order a book before 4pm I can get it in the next day.”

There are a few other staff now who help in the shop, and they have their own tastes and ideas, so over time, the range is only going to grow.

Whether it’s the curated selection, the expanding number of events, or the evolving use of local artwork, Fish Island Books is showing the enterprising and creative spirit that is deserving of its own four walls.

The collaboration has been deemed a success on both sides, giving Unlock a helping hand during the prolonged closure of the Roach Point Bridge, which has affected many of the local businesses on Fish Island. But for Agatha the search for a permanent space, which began in 2024, is still the priority.

“My goal is to have a permanent home, still definitely on on Fish Island,” she says. “But, for the time being, who knows where this goes with Unlock? It’s a really great partnership on both sides, so we like it to continue for a little while longer. Then? Watch this space.”