About Me

Hi! I’m Jess. I love telling stories about the power of communication and embracing differences, driven by my background in speech pathology and disability services. My appreciation of wordplay and mischief features prominently in my stories, which often serve a subtle message with a good side of quirk.

When I’m not writing for kids, I’m wrangling them! I live in a tiny house with my partner, two children and one very vocal ginger cat. Aside from stories, I also like coffee (who doesn’t?) and spoonerisms (doo husn’t?!). I am happily immersed in the wonderful ‘kidlit’ community and thrive on swapping kidlit tidbits with my peers.

Q&A

Q: Where do you get your ideas?

A: The shower! Ahem, I mean, my brain. It’s a very interesting place with many displaced sentences and rhyming couplets floating around, waiting to become a story. But in all seriousness, my best ideas always hit me in the shower. No wonder my water bills are so high!

Q: What do you do when you’re not writing?

A: When I’m not writing, you’ll find me attempting to write around a large, stubborn cat that is firmly planted on the keyboard. Or pretending to write while I’m really watching Netflix over the top of the laptop.

Q: What’s your favourite book?

A: Hahahahaha! Oh, you’re serious? Right. Uh… Well, I can’t choose. I love them all! But some at the top of my list would have to be Nevermoor (Jessica Townsend), His Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman), Toffle Towers (Tim Harris) and the Treehouse series (Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton).

News!

  • My debut picture book will be published in 2024 by Affirm Press
  • Read my profile piece on the Australian Writers’ Centre blog to hear more about my publishing journey and my debut picture book!
  • Read my guest blog post for the CYA Conference.
  • I was Runner Up in the Just Write For Kids 2022 Pitch It! competition (picture book).
  • My poem, ‘Just Believe’, was published in It’s a Kind of Magic: Stories and Spells by Second-Rate Sorcerers, an anthology from Anthology Angels. You can purchase it here.
  • My poem, ‘Sport Retort’, was published in the April 2022 edition of Orbit by The School Magazine.
  • I was shortlisted in the Just Write For Kids 2021 Pitch It! competition (junior fiction).
  • I came second place in the 2021 CYA competition in the Aspiring Picture Books – Primary category. 

Thanks for visiting. Please feel free to drop me a line!