Oisín McKenna: On Politics, Compassion, and Complexity in Literary Fiction

Oisín McKenna was born in Dublin and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. Evenings and Weekends has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award, and in 2017, Oisín was named in the Irish Times as one of the best-spoken word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin’s youth. Follow him on X (Twitter) and Instagram.

Oisín McKenna

Photo by David Evans

In this interview, Oisín discusses trying to capture a particular time of life in his new literary fiction novel, Evenings and Weekends, his advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Oisín McKenna
Literary agent: Liv Maidment, Madeleine Milburn Agency
Book title: Evenings and Weekends
Publisher: Mariner
Release date: July 2, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Elevator pitch: Sprawling multi-generational community drama set in London over the course of one weekend in 2019 during which a whale is beached on the banks of the Thames river. Sex, class, love, and politics collide over the course of one life-changing weekend.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I had been writing for theater and performance contexts for nearly 10 years. I was interested in reaching bigger audiences, and also making something that more closely resembled the artworks that I most admired, which usually were novels.

I had been living in London for about a year and a half, and it had been an exciting time in my life. I was living in a sort of 12-person warehouse commune, like the one described in the book. I had become involved in a big, exciting left-wing political project—the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the U.K.’s equivalent to Bernie Sanders—and my life felt rich and expansive. It was also precarious, both in the sense of my insecure tenancy and work contracts, and in the sense of global ecological and political instability. I was interested in capturing a precious time in my life while it was there to be captured.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I first started writing in 2019. It’s being published in 2024. The idea changed many times, particularly in the sense that I didn’t really have any ideas when I started writing it, beyond that I wanted to write a book. I started with some broad thematic and political concerns, stylistic preferences, and emotional textures, and very slowly sketched a very provisional plot and cast of characters. The plot and cast were entirely improvised and changed many times as I went along. But the political concerns and emotional textures remained the same.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The book is already out in the U.K. and Ireland, and I’ve had a few opportunities to talk about my own life and the “real-life inspirations” of the book. I was a little bit foolhardy about how emotionally taxing it would be to publicly discuss vulnerable details about my life, and I think I’d be a bit more wary about that in the future.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

It was a surprised (and a pleasure!) that it worked at all. I didn’t know how to write a book. I was an avid reader but not particularly plugged into the contemporary fiction landscape. Most of the time I was writing the book, I was improvising. It was very much a trial-and-error process, and I didn’t feel the book really came together until pretty late in the day. It was a joy and surprise to finish a draft that hung together as I wanted it to do.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

When working on this book, I was interested in writing something that moved people, that made them laugh, that was propulsive and gossipy and hard to put down and that was serious about giving readers a good time. In a sense, I wanted it to be a book that many different kinds of people would find easy to read, but I also wanted it to be deep and complicated and compassionate without being corny, and political without being didactic. I didn’t want to compromise on intellectual and artistic integrity, emotional complexity, and stylistic boldness, but I wanted to speak to large audiences, and appeal to both radical and populist sensibilities. Basically, I hope readers have fun, are moved, and have thoughts or feelings that they find stimulating or useful or enriching.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

For me, it’s a delicate balance between taking yourself seriously, being disciplined about having a writing routine, but also remembering to have fun and be playful. I do my best writing when it feels completely low stakes, when all I’m trying to do is create a pleasurable, stimulating, absorbing experience for myself. I try to remind myself before I sit down to write that it doesn’t really matter whether the writing fails or succeeds. I’m just here to have fun and see what happens. I find that this approach, combined with taking myself seriously enough to show up at my desk every day, works for me.

The other big thing is to try to have a pretty restrained relationship with my phone! If I go on Instagram before writing, it can ruin the whole writing day because it makes my mind so frazzled. I turn my phone off and put it in another room when I write, block all websites for the duration that I’m writing, and generally don’t have social media apps on my phone at all except when I have to re-download them for promotional purposes. I get really addicted to my phone and need to be careful about it because it affects my attention span in a way which is terrible for my writing and well-being. 

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