An Evening with Alan Murrin and Oisin McKenna

Join us for an evening with two fantastic Irish debuts to watch out for in 2024, Alan Murrin and Oisín McKenna.

Alan Murrin's The Coast Road has been picked by The Irish Times and the BBC as a book to look out for this year, and we can see why.

It’s 1994 in County Donegal, the legalisation of divorce is just around the corner and everyone is talking

about Colette Crowley – the writer and bohemian who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship

with a married man in Dublin.

But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why. Desperate to see her children, Colette enlists the help of

Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the two women forge a friendship that will send them on a

spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.

Alan Murrin is an Irish fiction writer. In 2021 he was the winner of the Bournemouth Writing Prize for his short story “The Wake”, which went on to be shortlisted for short story of the year at the Irish Book Awards. He writes for the Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement and Spectator.

As a novel in progress, The Coast Road was shortlisted for the Peters Fraser Dunlop Queer Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Caledonia New Novel Award. Alan is the recipient of a 2023 Irish Arts Council Next Generation Artist Award.

‘Alan Murrin writes with the calm, poetic fluency of the best of Irish writers ... A stonkingly good novel. Just read it’ - SARAH WINMAN, bestselling author of Still Life

‘I loved this novel. All the female characters are complex and fascinating, and full of anger and hope. I found it an addictive read’ - GILLIAN ANDERSON

‘This is an incredibly satisfying novel, told with great tenderness and tremendous storytelling verve. A book to be savoured’ - COLIN WALSH, author of Kala

‘Alan Murrin is a gifted storyteller, his characters so fully realised I fretted for them as I read. A beautiful, accomplished debut’ - LOUISE KENNEDY, author of Trespasses

Joining Alan is Oisín McKenna with his stunning debut Evenings and Weekends.

Summer in London stops for no-one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.

Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own.

Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.

As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin…

Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends – the highest award for an emerging artist in Ireland – and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England.

Evenings and Weekends has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award, which supports London’s most promising underrepresented writers. In 2017, Oisín was named in the Irish Times 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.

‘A masterpiece. This searing tale of love, sex and class will resonate for generations to come.’ OWEN JONES

'Zadie Smith-esque in its kaleidoscope of London' NIAMH CAMPBELL

‘A novel brimming with life, confronting the difficult and ugly with a fresh and charming levity. I can’t wait to read what McKenna writes next.’ NICOLA DINAN, author of Bellies