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Friday April 17, 2026 
12 September 2024
By Hannah Wilcox
North Sydney Council has welcomed its newest Don Bank Writer in Residence for 2024, Denise O’Hagan.
The program supports writers at all stages of their careers, providing a dedicated workspace in the Don Bank Museum and opportunities to engage with the local community.
An internationally recognised and award-winning poet and editor with two published poetry collections under her belt – The Beating Heart (Ginninderra Press, 2020) and Anamnesis (Recent Work Press, 2022) – O’Hagan told the Sun it was a lifelong dream to have a space of quiet to continue her work.
“Essentially because I’ve never found it possible to focus on my own writing at home, and it’s long been a dream of mine to have ‘a room of one’s own’ to pursue my own work without distraction,” she said.
“Like many people (especially women, I suspect), I’m used to writing in a fragmented manner around other commitments – namely, paid work and family – when there was a lull in the domestic routine, or late at night.”
O’Hagan added: “I’d heard of residencies but had never applied because they would have involved being away from home for too long.”
“I knew of Don Bank Museum because I sometimes attend Live Poets at Don Bank, hosted by the indefatigable Danny Gardner, and felt it would offer a secluded and serene space in which to write.”
Growing up in Rome in a family of writers, O’Hagan’s love for poetry was sparked by her father handing her an old copy of Irish writer Seamus Heaney at 14.
She hopes to complete her third poetry manuscript What the Mirror Tells – currently in draft form and spread over the table at Don Bank, she added – and to offer something back to the community.
“Hopefully by way of mentoring local writers as they find and develop their own voices! Though poetry is where I ended up, I began writing prose and short stories, and am interested in all forms of written expression,” O’Hagan continued.
“I would love to support and inspire those who may not have had the benefits of that sort of environment.”
“It’s never too late to learn, or to learn new approaches to and refine the art and craft of composition. The practice of creative writing is, by its very nature, a solitary business, but as I’ve discovered from those who have inspired me in my own journey, being part of a literary community and having a mentor can be utterly transformative, including at the later stages of revision and seeking submission or publication.”
Her latest collection, Anamnesis, explores the role of memory in the world we create through language and is a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award (USA), the Eyelands Book Awards (Greece) and is shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award (UK).
The writer said she is both grateful and excited to embark on the residency program.
“I never dreamt that I of all people would be selected – the whole concept of residencies had slipped into that category of things that ‘happen to other people’,” she added.
“I will be eternally grateful to North Sydney Council for this precious opportunity. The physical space for writers at Don Bank Museum is not only an historical gem, but also an unlikely pocket of peace nestled in amongst the high-rise buildings of North Sydney.”
O’Hagan remarked: “This house and its many original homely artefacts that have been preserved are wonderful; that it is put to active use today for gatherings and residencies is superb.”
“It is a retreat where I can truly relax and concentrate, and hear myself think. To have your writing accorded the respect of being granted its own ‘space’ in which to be developed is a rare honour.”