Jessica has worked across a range of fields, including writing, editing, research, education and creative consultancy. In recent years, she has facilitated Mystery + Mortality conversations, Writing for Insight and Transformation workshops, supported the establishment of Mental, and worked with The GroundSwell Project to organise From the Brink: A Fringe Festival About Ageing Dying and Grieving in the Blue Mountains, Australia.
In 2020, Jessica enjoyed 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).
In 2018 and 2019, she was the local lead of Compassionate Communities in Bundanoon, as part of an international movement that helps mobilise communities around end-of-life issues, with the support of Quest for Life. Compassionate Communities is led by The GroundSwell Project throughout Australia.
She has worked as an editor for several not-for-profit organisations, such as Oxfam Australia, The Dax Centre and All Together Now.
Over the years, her writing has appeared in Dumbo Feather, Overland, Pip Magazine, The Fold Southern Highlands, Cordite, 5 Poetry Journal, The Big Issue, Metro, The Death Mook, Australian Screen Education, Australian Bookseller + Publisher and InPress. Her books, Luscious Glass Cage (2008) and The Beguilings (2010), and Lightning Shades (2021) are published by Ginninderra Press.
Between 2001 and 2009, then from 2018 to 2020, she taught across a range of disciplines, including journalism, media studies, publishing and communications, cultural studies, and creative and non-fiction writing at the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Monash University and Western Sydney University.
All of this after completing a BA at the University of Melbourne (Cultural Studies and History) and a Certificate of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University.
She completed a PhD into the history of multicultural literature and the culture of whiteness in commercial publishing in Australia in 2004 (RMIT University).