Jessica is an award-winning author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir. Her research expertise spans creative or critical writing, life writing studies, Australian literary studies, disability studies, and climate fiction and the environmental humanities more broadly. Jessica is a 2022-2023 Arts Leader for the Australia Council for the Arts, and is co-editor of a journal of creative writing inspired by science, Science Write Now.
Jessica's short fiction, essays and poetry have won awards and shortlistings and appeared in national and international literary journals. Jessica is also the recipient of funding and residencies from Arts Queensland, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society ... Read more
About me
Jessica is an award-winning author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir. Her research expertise spans creative or critical writing, life writing studies, Australian literary studies, disability studies, and climate fiction and the environmental humanities more broadly. Jessica is a 2022-2023 Arts Leader for the Australia Council for the Arts, and is co-editor of a journal of creative writing inspired by science, Science Write Now.
Jessica's short fiction, essays and poetry have won awards and shortlistings and appeared in national and international literary journals. Jessica is also the recipient of funding and residencies from Arts Queensland, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and the IASH Environmental Humanities group at the University of Edinburgh.
Jessica's critical writing has been published in national and international journals in the fields of Australian literature, ecocriticism, nineteenth century literature, life writing and literary representations of disability. From 2016-2019 she was an Australia Research Council DECRA fellow at The University of Queensland, during which time she oversaw the creation of the Writing Disability in Australia dataset in the AustLit database to draw attention to representations of disability in Australian literature. Jessica is currently writing an ecobiography about Western Australia botanist Georgiana Molloy (1805-1843) and the plants that transformed her life.
Jessica is an Executive Member of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture. She is also a peer assessor for the Australia Council for the Arts.
About me
Association for the Study of Australian Literature
Association for the Study of Environment, Literature and Culture (Australia and New Zealand)
Australian Society of Authors
Writers SA
International Auto/Biography Association (IABA)
About me
Doctor of Philosophy University of London
Master of Arts in Writing University of Technology, Sydney
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) University of Wollongong
Writing, Gender and the Natural World
‘Nature writing’ is a popular genre in Britain and the United States, but it does not translate easily to an Australian context. The continent’s long lineage of First Nations’ custodianship, and brief history of colonisation, has arguably given rise to writing about the environment in complex ways.
Through a speaker series featuring nine female and non-binary writers, this project explores how writing about the environment manifests in Australia. This project has been funded by the Copyright Agency and the Creative People, Products and Places research centre, and takes place from July - December 2022.
Research
Research outputs for the last seven years are shown below. Some long-standing staff members may have older outputs included. To see earlier years visit ORCID or Scopus
Open access indicates that an output is open access.
| Year | Output |
|---|---|
| 2021 |
40
|
| 2021 |
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| 2021 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2018 |
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| 2018 |
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| 2017 |
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| 2014 |
|
| Year | Output |
|---|---|
| 2022 |
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| 2021 |
Open access
4
|
| 2020 |
Open access
|
| 2020 |
Open access
2
1
|
| 2020 |
Open access
4
1
|
| 2019 |
Open access
1
|
| 2017 |
Open access
|
| 2016 |
Open access
|
| 2015 |
Open access
|
| 2015 |
Open access
|
| 2014 |
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| 2014 |
Open access
|
| 2013 |
Open access
|
| 2013 |
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| 2010 |
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| 2010 |
White, J 2010, 'Body language', M/C Journal, vol. 13, no. 3.
Open access
|
Research
Writing, Gender and the Natural World
‘Nature writing’ is a popular genre in Britain and the United States, but it does not translate easily to an Australian context. The continent’s long lineage of First Nations’ custodianship, and brief history of colonisation, has arguably given rise to writing about the environment in complex ways.
Through a speaker series featuring nine female and non-binary writers, this project explores how writing about the environment manifests in Australia. This project has been funded by the Copyright Agency and the Creative People, Products and Places research centre, and takes place from July - December 2022.
Jessica's first novel, A Curious Intimacy (Penguin/Viking 2007) won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award, shortlistings for the Western Australia Premier's award and the Dobbie award for a first published work by an Australian woman writer, and was longlisted for the international Dublin Literary Award award. Her second novel, Entitlement, was published by Penguin/Viking in 2012. Jessica's most recent work, Hearing Maud (UWA Publishing 2019), is a hybrid memoir about deafness. It won the 2020 Michael Crouch award for debut biography, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the National Biography Award, and the People's Choice Award and Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance in the Queensland Literary Awards.
External engagement & recognition
| Organisation | Country |
|---|---|
| University of Queensland | AUSTRALIA |
| University of South Australia | AUSTRALIA |
External engagement & recognition
| Engagement/recognition | Year |
|---|---|
MemberAssociation for the study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Aust & NZ Chapter) |
2021 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2021 |
Newsletter EditorAssociation for the Study of Environment, Literature and Culture |
2021 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2021 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2020 |
MemberAssociation for the study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Aust & NZ Chapter) |
2020 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2020 |
Michael Crouch Award for Debut Work of BiographyState Library, New South Wales |
2020 |
Newsletter EditorAssociation for the Study of Environment, Literature and Culture |
2020 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2020 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2019 |
Keynote LecturePoetry and Perception in the Anthropocene, University of New England |
2019 |
MemberAssociation for the study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Aust & NZ Chapter) |
2019 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2019 |
Newsletter EditorAssociation for the Study of Environment, Literature and Culture |
2019 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2019 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2018 |
MemberAssociation for the study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Aust & NZ Chapter) |
2018 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2018 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2018 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2017 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2017 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2016 |
Invited LectureA Symposium on Australian Women Writers, State Library NSW |
2016 |
MemberInternational Association for the Study of Australia |
2016 |
Peer ReviewerDiscovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council |
2016 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2015 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2014 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2013 |
Invited LectureAustralian and New Zealand Conference for the Education of the Deaf, Brisbane |
2013 |
Contributing EditorAustralian Women Writers Challenge |
2012 |
Teaching & student supervision
Teaching & student supervision
Supervisions from 2010 shown
| Thesis title | Student status |
|---|---|
| Blackbirding and Cross-Cultural Ties | Current |
| Despair is not and option: exploring artistic affect for the promotion of triple planetary crisis law reform | Current |
| Ecocriticism and fantasy fiction: the importance of cli-fi in a climate crisis | Current |
| Pixels, pandemics and publishing: Australian literary magazines 2017-2022 | Current |
| Practicing allyship through writing: challenges of intersectionality in young adult fiction featuring LGBTQIA+ stories | Current |
| Radically re-imagining the Anthropocene: The role of memoir in communicating and resisting the climate crisis | Current |
| Sensing the Anthropocene: creative practice, climate change and the sensory world | Current |
| The relationship between humans and the more-than-human world: creative writing, psychology, and healing in the Anthropocene | Current |
| The Sir Terry Pratchett Memorial Scholarship | Current |
| Unmasking the provocatrix: engaging the clandestine literacies of L'écriture Kinesthésique to neuroqueer creative writing research | Current |
| Who are the Anthropos? The Philosophical Novel as a Response to Challenges of the Anthropocene | Current |
| Using a fictional micronation to explore issues in a future Australia | Completed |
