At 59, the Irish novelist Louise Kennedy is the literary world’s latest great find. She’s also her own self-discovery project: After working as a chef for nearly 30 years, Kennedy was in her late 40s when she first tried to write fiction.
She’s since set raw-hearted and tragically romantic tales in the shadow of the Troubles, the decades-long political conflict in Northern Ireland. Sexual and political awakenings exist side by side in Kennedy country. Trespasses (2023), her debut novel about a Catholic-Protestant love affair in 1970s Belfast, was translated into more than 20 languages and made into a miniseries starring Gillian Anderson Anderson. Her follow-up novel, Stations, published this month, is a punkier and even more electric work. It opens with Róisín, a bolshy and unpopular teenager, striking up a friendship with Red, a troubled local boy from a wealthy family. The story then jumps-cuts into the future, where Róisín finds Red living in a London squat, and arcs all the way into midlife.
Kennedy spoke to Vogue over Zoom from her home in Sligo about being a late bloomer, Irish-granny maximalism, and why the Troubles have been taking off.
Vogue: According to the lore, you didn’t write a word of fiction until you were 47.
Louise Kennedy: It’s true, I wasn’t scribbling away in secret. I didn’t write a thing until I joined a writing group, and even that was under duress. A friend who was involved when it was being set up kept messaging me all day, and I kept saying, “No, I’m not going.” I was busy, I was tired, and it was a ridiculous notion. I’m a cook. Why would I go to a writing group? Then she turned up at my house and told me to get in the car, so I went along. I’ve no idea why she did it.
Do you think starting later helped?
I don’t think it was a bad thing to be older and trying to write. I couldn’t have done this in my 20s. I’d have been way too self-conscious, and I wouldn’t have had the discipline. And if, in the very unlikely event, I had managed to publish something and anybody liked it, I wouldn’t have been able to handle the attention. Not in any shape or form.
You talk about writing in a way that isn’t tortured. You can write thousands of words a day. Is that the chef in you?
