Creatives, creatures & community

by Lydia Roberts

A LOVE LETTER to arachnids is how Armidale creative James O'Hanlon describes his forthcoming book, I Love Spiders.

James won the 2021 Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship for his manuscript, which takes an endearing and scientific look at his great passion, arachnids.

"I spent a lot of time hanging around arachnologists and realising how overwhelmingly fascinating spiders were," James says.  ​"I thought the rest of the world ought to know about this, so the idea for a popular science book was born."

James O'Hanlon, winner of the 2021 Varuna-NEWC Fellowship

I Love Spiders fuses James' first love, for science, with his accidental passion, creative writing.
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Before writing fiction, James was a PhD candidate, studying biology with the goal of becoming a research scientist. He started writing fiction as an escape from the stress of studying and work, writing science blogs and popular science articles. 

​He found his flow, writing non-fiction work that focuses on the natural world, while simultaneously writing stories about little known animals.

"My fiction stories tend to be very silly adventure stories, usually involving a talking animal," he says.

James used his week-long residency at Varuna to flesh out his manuscript, I Love Spiders, which will be published next year.

"As a freelancer working from home who also has a small child running around, the time and space for creative work that came from Varuna was absolutely priceless," James says.

"Until Varuna I had been writing in spare hours on weekends and evenings, my residency was the first real opportunity I had for a long, focussed period of writing and it was a great springboard to bring the idea for the book into reality."

​Born in Northern Ireland and raised in Western Sydney, James moved his young family to Armidale about six years ago.

Local residents can enjoy some of James' other passion, illustrating, with his murals found in the Welders Dog, Paper Tiger Eatery, and the Moore Street Arcade.
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He also keeps his science skills up-to-date, as host of the In Situ Science podcast, and regular appearances on Radio National's Science Show.

His advice to aspiring young artists is to, "find your community".

"Join a writers group and get involved with a writers' centre. Writing can be a lonely and quiet vocation and no matter how much you love your story it can quickly lead to self-doubt and lack of motivation.

"A supportive group can give you accountability, encouragement, and help you see your own work in a new light."