Josh Silver doesn’t own a turtleneck – and he’d quite like the literary world to stop expecting one.
The British author behind Fruit Fly, one of the most talked-about novels of 2026, sat down with Gertrude & Alice co-owner Jordan Turner at Paddington Uniting Church on Wednesday for a sold-out evening of readings, confessions and some home truths about the book business.
“I think the literary world is quite pretentious,” Silver told the crowd. “People feel like I should come and do these events in a turtleneck and glasses.”
The event, hosted by the beloved Bondi café-bookstore, was moved from the shop itself to the larger Oxford Street venue after tickets sold out.
READ MORE: My full review of Fruit Fly, and why I can’t stop recommending it
Who is Josh Silver?
Silver grew up on a farm in England’s Lake District before his family moved to Manchester, where he still lives.
He trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and performed in the West End and on Broadway – then walked away from acting altogether and retrained as a mental health nurse, a job he still holds, working with teenagers.
He’s the author of the YA dystopian thrillers HappyHead and Dead Happy – the former optioned for the screen by Rocketman star Taron Egerton in 2023.
READ MORE: Why I devoured Josh Silver’s HappyHead
Fruit Fly, his first novel for adults, was published in the UK in April and in the US in August. The BBC named it one of its 12 books to read in 2026, Ocean Vuong called it “a funny and nasty novel about appropriation”, and A24 won a bidding war for the TV rights in July, according to Deadline.
What is Fruit Fly about?
Mallory Maddox is a literary sensation seven years deep in writer’s block and desperate for a second bestseller. She finds her muse in Leo, a young gay addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex to survive – and decides his story is hers to tell.
The novel has drawn comparisons to R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, and Silver didn’t shy away from the influence on Wednesday, naming Kuang’s book, Percival Everett’s Erasure and its film adaptation American Fiction as the works that cracked his own story open.
“That film is so funny,” he said of American Fiction, before explaining why its satire of a white publishing house demanding “authentic” Black stories hit so close to home.
READ MORE: Everything we know about the Fruit Fly TV adaptation so far
Silver said the industry talks constantly about wanting diverse and authentic voices, but in his experience what it really wants is the version that fits neatly in a box – “usually about stereotypes”.
The story America ‘wasn’t ready for’
Silver was candid about how hard Fruit Fly was to sell in the US, where he said only Crooked Lane Books would take it.
“The feedback I got from America was that this doesn’t feel like the kind of story people are ready for,” he said. “And I was like, OK.”
He also took aim at the booming “M/M” romance category – queer love stories he said are often written without a single gay man involved in their creation.
“You can do that if you want,” he said. “But stop changing the wording.”
READ MORE: Just how many M/M hockey romance novels exist? The number is wild
What frustrated him, he said, was watching a sanitised versions of gay romance written often written by women without lived experience. Meanwhile while the harder parts of his own experience – growing up in a religious home, feeling he couldn’t be openly gay in theatre – were left weren’t being told.
“I don’t think it’s fair that this is the version of my story that is getting in the big bucks,” he said.
The nurse in the room
The most affecting stretch of the night came when Turner asked whether Silver’s own history had shaped the book’s two narrators.
“I’d had a rough time in my late 20s and I found it hard to get sober,” Silver said. “Both [Mallory and Leo] have this quality of needing to be outside of themselves. He’s doing the drugs, she’s doing the fantasy.
“So yeah, I do draw on my own stuff.”
It was nursing, he said, that finally shifted something. After years of chasing validation through auditions, the job gave him a purpose that pointed outward rather than in.
“As a nurse you’re not trying to get [validation]. That’s not what you’re trying to do – you’re trying to help people get better,” he said.
In one of the sweetest moments of the night, Silver spotted a former nursing colleague in the audience and called her one of the best nurses he’s ever met.
READ MORE: I knew almost nothing about Jennette McCurdy. Then I read ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’
Not here to be liked
Don’t expect Silver to apologise for Mallory, a narrator plenty of readers have called monstrous.
“I don’t need you to like her,” he said. “That’s never been something I see as my job. But I do want you to understand why she’s doing what she’s doing.”
That, he said, is the whole philosophy: “If you can understand where they’re coming from, that’s my job.”
He was just as relaxed about his place in the literary pecking order. At 17, Silver was offered a place to read English at Cambridge – and turned it down for drama school.
“Now I look back, I am so glad I didn’t go,” he said. “I lead with character, I lead with voice, and my job is to put people in the mind of someone.
“I’ve got quite fast-paced books, and that’s fine by me.”
What’s next
Silver teased that his next project will be a sharp departure, but was sworn to secrecy by his publicist not to talk about his next book. He did ponder a sci-fi story he has always wanted to tell about a post-climate-change world involving twins with very different abilities.
Fruit Fly is out now (RRP $32.99) and available from Gertrude & Alice Café Bookstore, Bondi Beach.
Huge thank you to Gertrude & Alice Café Bookstore for putting on this event. Follow Gertrude & Alice Café Bookstore on Substack. Also follow Jordan Turner on Substack.
Everything we know about the Fruit Fly TV adaptation so far
A24 UK has acquired the television rights to Josh Silver’s darkly funny publishing satire, beating out other studios in a competitive bidding process, according to Deadline.