Jesse’s first novel for grownups was After the Party (Hardie Grant Books 2005), her second The Raven’s Heart, (HarperCollins 2011 and Bywater Books 2012) and her third Chasing the Light: A Novel of Antarctica (HarperCollins 2013).
After the Party was among the Australian Book Review list of all-time favourite Australian novels (2010) and Chasing the Light won the 2011/12 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship.
Jesse wrote The Raven’s Heart, about the real Blackadder family in 16th century Scotland, after she finally got sick of people asking if she was related to Rowan Atkinson.
During 2013 The Raven’s Heart won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Historical Fiction (USA) and the Golden Crown Award (USA), was awarded the bronze medal by Independent Publisher Book Awards Historical Fiction (USA), was a finalist in both the Lambda Foundation Literary Award (USA) and ForeWord Book of the Year (USA); and won the Varuna HarperCollins Manuscript Development Award 2011 (Australia).
Jesse is writing a series of junior fiction novels (for readers aged 8-13). The first – Stay: the last dog in Antarctica – was published in July 2013 by ABC Books and the second, Paruku The Desert Brumby, in January 2014.
Jesse is an experienced freelance writer and journalist. She studied creative writing at university (along with film and photography) in a BA (Communication) at the University of Technology Sydney. She has a Master of Applied Science (Social Ecology) and is completing her Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney.
Hear Jesse discuss writing in Narrandera at the Art Hub in the Train Station from 11am to 12.30pm on Tuesday 29 July.
