Waterford Libraries and Creative Ireland are working with author and dancer Lani O’Hanlon to deliver a Reader in Residence Pilot Project during the winter months of 2017.

The aim of the Reader in Residence Pilot Programme is to encourage families of all types to use their local library and to engage the positive benefits of reading for learning, creativity and wellbeing, with the activities being geared to different age groups and genres.

The Reader in Residence will work mainly in the twelve libraries across the City and County of Waterford, with the potential to deliver programmes and events in partner venues.

Keep up to date with Reader in Residence events by clicking on our Events page.

Lani O’Hanlon – Reader In Residence 

From a theatrical family, Lani O’ Hanlon is a poet, writer, dancer and movement artist/therapist, author of Dancing the Rainbow, Holistic Well-Being through Movement (Mercier Press 2007).

Lani’s work has been published in Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Mslexia, Southword, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Skylight Poets, The Irish Times, the Anthologies; Small Lives (Poddle) Halleluiah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe) and read regularly on Sunday Miscellany – shortlisted for FISH, poetry and flash fiction, and a winner of the Earthsong Mslexia competition, her fiction has been shortlisted for Over the Edge writer of the year, the International Writer’s Festival, Date with and Agent 2016 and is shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing 2017.

She has received numerous bursaries and awards from Co. Waterford and City Arts Office and her poetry chapbook, The Little Theatre launched by her mentor; Poet and Editor, Thomas McCarthy, in 2017, was funded by Artlinks. She is currently working towards a first poetry collection and completing a first novel.

“A poet of grace, memory and theatre, Lani O’Hanlon has emerged as one of the most distinctive and talented new poets of the South East.” – Thomas McCarthy

“Her work is both a cure for what ails us, and a cure for language itself: like the best and the rarest of writers, she restores words to their full potency and power.” – Grace Wells

“Clear fresh language here avoids polemic, and the poem has a controlled pressure of feeling in it.” – Penelope Shuttle, Mslexia