Joanne O'Neill

Joanne O'Neill was delighted to be awarded the volunteering through adversity award for her voluntary work at Blythe Bridge Library in Staffordshire, where she lives and wrote both The Dreamweaver and On the Edge, and where she grew up. The library and her work there not only feature heavily in both The Dreamweaver and On the Edge, but also helped drive her writing, the role she took on featuring heavily in inspiration and getting to know a good group of end users and of course potential readers! 

On the Edge tells a real life account of how life can be impacted by mental illness, what life becomes like for a sufferer and what provision there is to support needs in the community and to make a devastating illness more bearable. The Dreamweaver is an adventure story, structured as a traditional children's narrative hopefully appealing to younger readers in terms an entertaining plot and exciting scenarios.