Allen Bratton and Oisín McKenna bring the many and varied facets of life and love in contemporary London society to the page in two debut novels exploring fraught family relationships and escaping expectations.

Caught in the clutches of an abusive family relationship and struggling to break free, an unexpected romance becomes the catalyst for a reckoning that brings reluctant aristocrat Hal face to face with loneliness, grief, and shame in Bratton’s Henry Henry. Meanwhile in McKenna’s Evenings and Weekends, a multi-generational cast of characters are about to find their lives converging over the course of one life-altering weekend that sees tensions coming to a head and secrets revealed.

Both brimming with sexual tension and razor sharp humour, Bratton and McKenna have thrown open the doors of London’s stately homes and steamy clubs alike to reveal the rich and complicated inner lives of the people inside just trying to get by.

Allen Bratton holds an MA in English Language and Literatures, having written a thesis on medieval English kingship. He is the winner of the 2021 Sewanee Review Fiction Contest and was longlisted for the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award.

Oisín McKenna has written and performed four theatre shows and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin’s youth. In 2017, he was named in the Irish Times one of the best-spoken word artists in the country.

This event will be chaired by writer, performer and cultural consultant Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan. Her work has been published by Dedalus Press, UCD Press, Lifeboat Press, Banshee, Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland, and others. She was Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics for 2023.