Oisín McKenna was awarded a London Writers Award in 2022. His novel Evenings and Weekends, described by both Dazed and The Evening Standard as ‘the book of the summer’, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate (UK) and Mariner Books (US).
Oisín was one of the judges of the 2025 London Writers Awards. He gave a speech to the awardees at the first event of the ten month programme.
We’re pleased to be able to share his speech here in full. Thank you, Oisín.
“Hello. Thanks so much to Spread the Word for having me today. It’s a real pleasure and an honour to be invited, and a joy to get to talk to a room full of such wonderful and talented writers, some of whose work I had the great pleasure of reading.
I want to start by saying congratulations for having been selected as part of this year’s cohort. It’s an enormous achievement and testament to the fact that each of you in this room is a talented and capable and serious writer. I hope you’re letting the weight of that achievement sink in, that you feel buoyant and proud of what you’ve accomplished.
When Bobby invited me to do this, the brief was to talk a little about my writing life before I got published, a little about my writing life now, and any words of encouragement I can offer to you as you get started on the programme.
I’m hoping that as I’m meeting you today, you’re in a state of celebration of what you’ve accomplished and confidence about what you’ll go on to accomplish, but I know also that every writer who embarks on a long project, like a novel or collection of stories, as I know many of you will do throughout this programme, will inevitably have to weather moments of feeling doubtful and lost and frustrated, and as such, I thought today I could speak to my experience of those moments, and what I’ve learned about weathering them.
To say a little of my writing life before and after I got published, my novel, Evenings and Weekends, came out last year when I was thirty-two, around twelve years after I first started trying to be a working writer. Over the course of that twelve years, I worked full-time in various day jobs, and sometimes night jobs, at first in retail, then call centres, then office work, while writing and performing spoken word pieces at various venues in Dublin, then London. The single biggest challenge of my writing life before I got published was how to preserve enough time and energy throughout my working week so there would be enough left over for writing. I felt as if my whole life were an equation, which, if solved correctly, would allow me to make enough money to eat and pay rent, and time to write, and read, and keep my flat clean, and see my friends, and work out.
I felt as if my whole life were an equation, which, if solved correctly, would allow me to make enough money to eat and pay rent, and time to write, and read, and keep my flat clean, and see my friends, and work out.
Since I got published, this equation has, at times, become easier to solve.
But in other ways, my writing life has not changed very much at all.
As it happens, I am speaking to you in the midst of a moment of doubt and frustration like those described earlier. I’m struggling through a draft of a second book, and on more days than not, I feel sure that it will not work, and I am not good enough. More often than I’d like, I have found myself reading the work of peers who I admire, with a deflated feeling at how poorly my work seems to compare. This isn’t a new feeling, although I had thought that becoming published would signal an end to this self-doubt, that it would prove to myself that I was a good, serious writer and other people thought so too. During the five years it took to write and publish my first novel, I often felt certain then that I could not do it. Even though this has been proven wrong – I could do it, and did – now that the feeling has re-emerged, I still struggle to see it as wholly discredited.
I started wanting to be a writer when I was about seven, and my primary school teacher, Ms McNamara, who had an interest in enriching the cultural lives of the children, took us on various extra-curricular school trips, including, among other things, to see the statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square in Dublin City Centre. I found Oscar Wilde exciting because he was gay and loved, loved enough for our teacher to take us to see his statue, for there to be a statue at all. It was my first time hearing of a gay person being admired. So far, I’d only heard of them being pitiable or laughable or disgusting. Already, at seven, I had started to think of myself as gay, and tentatively, confusedly began to see being a writer as a way – perhaps the only way – to be gay and still loved.
It was also, around that time, that Britney Spears released her album, Baby One More Time. This thrilled me like nothing had thrilled me before, and in aspiration of one day becoming a popstar like Britney, I started writing song lyrics in my copybooks at school, which was my first experience of writing. I was then and still am a shy person, and often come away from encounters feeling that I lacked the verbal capacities to communicate what I meant, and for many years, thought of the day when I might publish a book, in which I could articulate my thoughts robustly, in ways which I could not do in real life. I wanted to be like a combination of Oscar Wilde and Britney Spears, in that I wanted to be glamorous, admired, and able to communicate with depth and power and charisma.
I wanted to write as a way of being loved, loveable, understood and understandable.
Which is to say, the stakes were pretty high.
I think it’s common for a writer to want a great deal from their writing, not least for it to be good, whatever that means to you, and for its goodness to be confirmed by others.
This, of course, can motivate you, as it motivated me, to build a diligent writing routine. It can make you ambitions and tenacious. But, I would say, it hasn’t made my writing better. More often, in my experience, it has created a sense of stifling obligation, making the creative and playful part of my brain so afraid of failing that it becomes immobilised.
When I was quite young, I received a piece of advice on becoming a writer and building a writing routine. The advice was that even when it is not technically your job to write, in the sense of it not being how you make your money, you must treat it like paid work, and show up every day as if you’ll get fired for not doing so. This was helpful advice in that it encouraged me to be serious about my writing routine, but it was obstructive, too, in that it is, in fact, incredibly difficult to write playfully and freely, if the proverbial boss is standing over your shoulder and threatening to terminate your contract if you don’t meet your targets. Having a good writing life, to me, involves a subtle balance between being entirely serious and incredibly silly all at the one time. It is, of course, helpful to commit to your routine, to write a little each day, even when you don’t feel like it, but when it feels too much like toil, or obligation, or when you do it simply to avoid feelings of guilt or shame, those are the occasions on which you start to feel blocked and procrastinate.
Having a good writing life, to me, involves a subtle balance between being entirely serious and incredibly silly all at the one time.
One technique I have found for counter-acting this, is when I sit down to write, I tell myself, gently, playfully, that none of it matters. It does not matter what I write today, whether it’s 2,000 words or 10 words, whether those words encapsulate everything I want to say, or whether they are entirely unusable words which I will never revisit. It can help, sometimes, to set a very low target, like write 100 words, or for 10, 20, 30 minutes, and to have no expectations for the quality of the writing. Setting a low target and no expectations, I find, can be a way of tricking your mind into surpassing that target and exceeding expectations. If there is so much at stake by not doing it, or by doing it and doing it poorly, my inner writer becomes so afraid of failing, that it is not able to try at all, but if none of it matters, then it is free to relax, get loose, suggest its weirdest ideas.
If you have a bad writing day, I would recommend, too, forgiving yourself for it as soon as possible. When you’re working on a long-form project, inevitably there will be periods of time which feel like failure, but this, too, is an inherent part of any artistic process: any book you have ever admired will have gone through long and necessary periods during which it seemed certain that this book would never reach fruition let alone publication. Your job in those moments is to gently probe into what you like or don’t like about your project, and then, to be very kind to yourself. In my experience, scolding yourself for flaws in your writing, perceived inadequacies compared to your peers, or for having not reached certain milestones, is not going to help you reach those milestones any faster.
Writing for pleasure, play, stimulation, and intrigue, is a way of being resilient to the pendulum swing of external approval and rejection.
The most important thing I’ve learned about writing and being a writer, is I write best when I’m having fun. Inevitably, a writing life involves some rejection, and the reassurance of external validation is often fleeting and temporary. Writing for pleasure, play, stimulation, and intrigue, is a way of being resilient to the pendulum swing of external approval and rejection. Writing in a way which prioritises the quality, richness, and depth of your experience as you do so, which is concerned only with the process, never an end goal, is, I think, a more reliable route towards reaching that end goal. It is helpful, I think, to try to cultivate a sense of self-worth that isn’t contingent on whether or not you’ve had a good writing day, let alone whether other people or organisations say your work is good. It is useful, I think, to remind yourself your value cannot be measured discreetly by any one external success, nor by the quality of any one day’s writing.
Part of the brilliance of the London Writer’s Awards is that you’ll receive invaluable feedback from those in your cohort which will help you to think about those small and incremental edits, in novel and stimulating ways. In general, the insight and feedback and most importantly, comradeship of your peers, is one of the most valuable components when gathering the pieces for a life in writing.
The final thing I’d say is about editing. One way to relieve yourself of the pressure to write something you’re proud of, and to write it right now, is to trust that it is in the slow work of small and incremental edits that the manuscript in front of you will become the one you envision. In my experience, coming to the end of a first draft involves a fleeting moment of triumph and pride, followed by a deep despondency at how far your draft seems from the finished book you had imagined. I think it’s worth having almost shockingly low standards for that first draft, accepting that you will, inevitably, write sentences and even whole chapters that on revisiting will seem truly horrible, but trust, also, that this is normal and absolutely necessary: raise the bar slowly with each small tweak you make to your draft, and you’ll find yourself getting closer to what you had hoped for. Part of the brilliance of the London Writer’s Awards is that you’ll receive invaluable feedback from those in your cohort which will help you to think about those small and incremental edits, in novel and stimulating ways. In general, the insight and feedback and most importantly, comradeship of your peers, is one of the most valuable components when gathering the pieces for a life in writing. This, I hope, will be an exciting, and challenging, and rewarding journey for all of you, and I wish you great luck.”
About Oisín McKenna
Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. His novel Evenings and Weekends, described by both Dazed and The Evening Standard as ‘the book of the summer’, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate (UK) and Mariner Books (US). He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends and it was developed with further support from Arts Council England. In 2022, he was awarded a London Writers Award, and in 2017, he 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 his writing has appeared in GQ, the Evening Standard, the Irish Times, Banshee, and more.
class="post-73643 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-news"Early Career Bursary alumna Ana Diamond signs major deal with Canongate
Narrative non-fiction writer Ana Diamond, who wrote during the Spread the Word Early Career Bursary programme under the name A.D. Aaba Atach, has signed a major deal with Canongate for her book, Breaking Silence: The Daughters of Iran. Curtis Brown have acquired world rights, and Simon and Schuster, North American rights. Breaking Silence is told through the lens of Ana’s own experience as a teenager being imprisoned on death row in Iran’s “notorious” Evin Prison. Breaking Silence: The Daughters of Iran is scheduled for publication in spring 2027.
Ana Diamond (A. D. Aaba Atach) was a recipient of the 2024 Early Career Bursary. The bursaries provided three London writers on a low income with bursaries each worth £15,000; £10,000 cash and £5,000, to put towards development opportunities.
On receiving the bursary, Ana Diamond said: “In the pursuit of an inclusive publishing industry, few organisations actually champion writers on a low income by recognising our talent and contributions to the literary world. Being awarded the Early Career Bursary is not merely a privilege; it’s a sanctuary that nurtures the literary potential of those whose stories were often borrowed and written by others more fortunate. I am immensely grateful to have been given this opportunity to join a supportive community of writers in London and develop my craft to its fullest extent.”
Read more about Ana’s book deal in the Bookseller.
The Early Career Bursaries were made possible by a generous philanthropic gift from Sam and Rosie Berwick.
class="post-73505 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-misc"Sky Breaks – an interactive walk by Amber Obasi and 皚桐 (Aí Tung)
Break, noun
The interruption of continuity or uniformity; a pause in work or during an activity or event.
What is the point of breaks? What happens when we look at the sky, the streets, passers by? What transformations can be ushered in through daydreams?
Sky Breaks an interactive piece of writing produced by Amber Obasi and 皚桐 (Aí Tung), and created in collaboration with Deptford residents. It explores these questions, using benches, bus-stops, low walls, and other public seating areas across Deptford to consider the power of public breaks. Not just as single moments of time, but as interconnected processes in the creation of change.
You are invited to immerse yourself in and be guided by these poems and recordings drawn from and inspired by Deptford.
The walk is based around x locations in Deptford. Amber and Aí have created new poetic sound works, designed specifically to be listened to at each of these sites. To take part, we encourage you to navigate your way to the different locations and listen to the pieces as you stop, reflect, and consider what we truly want when we’re not stuck in “business as usual”. Directions and a map to the locations are included below.
You can also follow the route on Google Maps, or download the route as a .gpx file.
Or download a map and directions, including a transcript of the poems (PDF). Printouts of the map will also be available from the Deptford Literature Festival Info Desk at Deptford Lounge on Saturday 29 March 2025.
Credits
Created and written by Amber Obasi
Production and sound design by 皚桐 (Aí Tung)
If you enjoyed this walking tour, you may also like:
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Dead Men in Deptford an audio guided literary history walking tour of the area by author Anna Sayburn Lane.
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Black History Walking Tour an audio guided walk exploring the Black history of Deptford and Lewisham by historian and author Jody Burton
- Sounding Deptford an audio walk based on new audio-poems created by James Wilkes, Joe Rizzo Naudi and Michael Umney; drawn from and inspired by the sounds of Deptford and its communities
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Published 27 March 2025
class="post-73319 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-news"Campaign Update February 2025: Lewisham, Borough of Literature
On 4 February we held the second public meeting for our Lewisham, Borough of Literature campaign. The campaign aims to see Lewisham declared as the UK’s first Borough of Literature in order to give our borough recognition, drive funding towards word-related activities in the area, and give existing and new, talented writers and audiences more opportunities to develop their creativity and share their work.
The meeting on 4 February aimed to bring together local community members and grassroots community groups. The session, which was held at the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, followed the same broad agenda as our first meeting.
We started with a mapping exercise to understand what word-related events and projects already exist in Lewisham. Participants shared a broad range of existing activities such as local book groups, scratch nights, festivals, adult literacy and numeracy classes, creative writing sesssions, libraries and cafes that offer a programme of events.
From there, we moved on to imagining what a ‘Borough of Literature’ could look like and the group had loads of brilliant ideas. Some key concerns included: supporting children and young people to read for pleasure; creating opportunities in the many different languages spoken in Lewisham, not just in English; making sure it is a celebration for everyone that brings literature to people where they are; commemorating famous local authors like H. G. Wells and E. Nesbit; creating intergenerational spaces; and enabling young people to understand the career paths available to them in publishing, writing and literature more broadly.
Lewisham is an incredibly diverse borough and making sure that the Borough of Literature campaign is truly for all local people is a priority for the team, as well as being raised at all of our meetings so far by local participants. Alongside English, languages spoken in the borough according to the 2021 census include: Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, East Asian and South Asian languages, and languages from Africa. Unfortunately, more detailed information about languages spoken was not available in 2021 census data. 0.5% of the local population cannot speak English and a further 2.8% cannot speak it well. For the Borough of Literature, activities carried out in other languages and focused on translation will be important to make sure that everyone living in Lewisham has the opportunity to take part.
Next, we talked about what a thriving literature ecosystem in the borough would look like. Key points included: funding; accessible venues; and opportunities in all types of literature and creative activities, from poetry to photography.
Finally, we asked what difference a Borough of Literautre could make to Lewisham residents. The conversation covered: buiding a collective sense of pride in the area and it’s different communities; creating a strong legacy of increased opportunities and recognition for the borough; preserving the local history of migration; and reinvigorating local venues and businesses.
On Tuesday 25 February we will be popping up at a LEAN (Lewisham Education Arts Network) meeting to talk to local teachers about the Lewisham Borough of Literature. If you are not a teacher but would love to share your ideas for the campaign, we will hold another public meeting during Deptford Literature Festival on Saturday 29 March. You’ll also have the opportunity to meet our advisory group and hear commissioned writers read their pieces about Lewisham. The meeting is free to attend but places must be booked.
class="post-73219 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-news"Announcing the 2025 London Writers Awards winners
Spread the Word, London’s literature development agency, is delighted to announce the names of the 24 writers who have been selected for the 2025 London Writers Awards. The programme has returned for a fifth year thanks to a generous philanthropic donation by Sam and Rosie Berwick. Founding partners are: the Independent Publishers Guild and the Society of Authors, this year’s sponsors are A M Heath, Bell Lomax Moreton, Janklow and Nesbit and Susanna Lea Associates.
In 2025, 24 London-based writers from communities underrepresented in UK publishing – Black, Asian or Global Majority, Working Class, LGBTQIA+, D/deaf and disabled, and writers on a low income – will be supported and nurtured through a ten-month development programme in preparation for meeting with agents and publishers and pursuing their writing careers.
The 2025 cohort comes from a diverse range of backgrounds, writing across Literary Fiction, Commercial Fiction and YA/Children’s Fiction. They include a trainee solicitor, documentary filmmaker, Jordanian-Palestinian playwright, mental health doctor, and an occasional drag queen.
The full list of London Writers Award winners is:
Literary Fiction: Maddy Accalia, Lishani Ramanayake, Laila Obeidat, Meher Iqbal, J. Lian Ho, Jose Ignacio Narciso, Susie Thornberry, V. Matsumari, Swithun Cooper, Judah Abraham-Silas, Sophia Khan, Sukie Wilson
Commercial Fiction: Ally Coker, Daniel Culpan, Nic Falvo, Emily D. Bean, Nkenna Ndujiuba, L.A. Chase
YA/Children’s Fiction: Coggin Galbreath, Victoria Ibbett, Damisi Adetola, Noel Emerald, Rukiya Shanthi, Shivanthi Sathanandan
Oisín McKenna 2025 judge, says: “I was completely thrilled by the quality of the submissions to this year’s London Writers Awards – they are bold, strange, enticing and powerful, written by writers with a remarkable grasp of their own craft and vision. As an alumnus of the programme, I can say with certainty that it’s a career-changing experience. It can make a life and career in writing imaginable and tangible, where before it may have felt remote, nebulous, and difficult to reach, giving participants permission to handle their own work with confidence and seriousness. I’m certain that with the transformative support offered by the London Writers Awards that there are bright futures ahead for these writers.”
Sam Berwick, philanthropist and funder of the 2025 London Writers Awards, says: “Rosie and I have had the great fortune to have worked with Spread the Word over the past three years, and we can’t say strongly enough what a great experience that has been. Now, being in a position to help them bring back such a critical project as the London Writers Award is a huge and very exciting privilege for us. We look forward to helping Spread the Word in this mission, and we would kindly call strongly and hopefully persuasively for both individuals and foundations to join us in further helping them in growing projects like the London Writers Awards. They are needed more than ever in the current environment.”
Ruth Harrison, Director of Spread the Word, comments: “We are delighted to be welcoming a new cohort of writers to this year’s London Writers Awards. Becoming a writer is a precarious endeavour. In this challenging time for arts funding, we would like to thank Sam and Rosie Berwick for their commitment to supporting writers with the craft, connections and community to take forward their careers. Sustained and accessible development opportunities are essential to ensuring we get to read and hear the stories writers want to tell from across our communities. This commitment is needed more than ever, and we welcome conversations on how we can increase the support and opportunities available to writers from underrepresented backgrounds in publishing.”
About the London Writers Awards
The London Writers Awards is the UK’s most successful development programme for writers from communities underrepresented in UK publishing. To date, 50 alumni have been agented and 37 have made book deals as a result of participating in the programme. The London Writers Awards has launched the careers of, amongst others: Natasha Brown, Tice Cin, Ashani Lewis, Cecile Pin, Pam Williams, Santanu Bhattacharya and Tom Newlands, whose debut novel Only Here, Only Now was selected as a Guardian Fiction Book of the Year, and Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2025.
Originally launched in 2018, the programme ran for 4 years and supported 120 writers. In 2021, the London Writers Awards was cited by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Creative Diversity as an exemplary writer development programme. The cohort from our most recent programme in 2022 included writers who have gone on to receive considerable acclaim, including Oisín Mckenna (Evenings and Weekends, Fourth Estate) and Chris Bridges (Sick to Death, Avon).
This new iteration of the programme will support 24 unagented and unpublished London writers of Literary, Commercial and YA/Children’s Fiction each year from 2025 to 2027. The annual 10-month programme is free to participate in and offers bursary and access funds.
The 24 writers begin with a Writers’ Lab on Saturday 22 February. Over the course of ten months, the award recipients will: attend fortnightly critical feedback groups to grow and develop their work; participate in nine masterclasses led by writers and industry professionals; attend two Writers Labs, one with peers, judges and programme alumni and another with editors, publishers and agents; and receive a variety of bespoke development opportunities with editors, agents and the Spread the Word team.
All Awardees will receive 1-2-1 professional development sessions with members of the Spread the Word team to support their development whilst on the programme. Information about the Awardees’ projects will be distributed to over 350 agents and editors. Spread the Word has also set up an alumni network for the 120 previous recipients of the Award, to which 2025 awardees will be invited to join. This includes on-going craft, career and networking opportunities.
#LondonWritersAwards2025
For more information, visit: https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/projects/london-writers-awards
Published 19 February 2025
class="post-72991 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-opportunities"Volunteer at Deptford Literature Festival 2025
Are you interested in being a part of a large and vibrant literature event? Volunteering at Deptford Literature Festival events offers a fabulous opportunity to immerse yourself in literature for a day.
What does it involve?
We’re looking for volunteers to support on Saturday 29 March. You’d need to be available 9am – 6pm on that day.
You will mostly be based at Deptford Lounge and/or The Albany, but might be ask to cover some events at venues nearby (e.g: Brookmill Park or the Moonshot Centre) or on one of our walking tours (max. 3-4 mile walk).
Your responsibilities will include:
- Managing ticketing
- Introducing events to the audience
- Helping people who have questions
- Collecting feedback
You will also get to attend and take part in the sessions that you support.
Volunteers are provided with a festival t-shirt, a £30 travel and food stipend, and are offered a free ticket to our opening event Lewisham Lyricists at the Albany on Friday 28 March.
Volunteer briefing
If you sign up to become a festival volunteer we will need you to attend our online briefing session. Please check before you sign up that you will be able to attend the session. Volunteer briefing will happen via Zoom on Monday 17 March at 7-8.30pm.
This session will explain how the festival works, talk through the schedule for the day and outline how we’d like you to support visitors. This session will also include training from Fuse Theatre offering an introduction to British Sign Language and to working bilingually and with sign language users and interpreters.
Sign up to volunteer
Please complete the application form by Monday 10 March to be considered for a volunteering role. We’ll be in touch shortly after the deadline to confirm your involvement.
If you have any questions or would like to request any reasonable adjustments to the application process, please get in touch with us via [email protected].