Jessica Raschke is a writer, artist, educator and therapist based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Her professional background spans writing, editing, research, tertiary and community education, creative consultancy, death and grief literacy, and holistic counselling and psychotherapy.
She has more than 15 years of experience teaching across tertiary and community education in holistic counselling and psychotherapy, journalism, media studies, publishing, communications, cultural studies, and creative and non-fiction writing at the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Monash University, Western Sydney University, and Metavision.
She has worked as a writer and editor for several not-for-profit organisations, such as Oxfam Australia, The Dax Centre and All Together Now. Her writing has appeared in many publications, such as Dumbo Feather, Overland, Pip Magazine, The Big Issue, Metro, The Death Mook, Australian Screen Education, Australian Bookseller + Publisher and InPress.
Her poetry collections, Luscious Glass Cage (2008), The Beguilings (2010), and Lightning Shades (2021) are published by Ginninderra Press.
Her community work has involved working with The GroundSwell Project to organise From the Brink: A Fringe Festival About Ageing Dying and Grieving (2019) in the Blue Mountains. In 2018 and 2019, she was the local lead for Compassionate Communities in Bundanoon, an initiative supported by Quest for Life and The GroundSwell Project that encourages communities to become more engaged with end-of-life issues.
Art installations have included (selected):
- Soul Secrets, Micro Galleries, Nowra (2015)
- Ten Thousand Paces, Bowral (2016)
- Hapenny Lane, Katoomba (2017)
- Leaving Love, Retford Park and other locations (2018–2019)
- Wisdom Weaving, Hillview Sculpture Biennial and other locations (2018)
- Liminal Leaves, Retford Park (2022)
- Humanity Always
- Before I Die walls
Jessica has undertaken a range of artist and writing residencies, including some writing time at Varuna, and as part of The CORRIDOR Project‘s residency program. In 2019 she was selected for a Testing Grounds residency @ Test Sites (Melbourne), and an Enter Text residency at Arteles (Finland). One of her great passion projects was The Soul Spectrum.