Career summary

Jessica was always passionate about writing as a child. She grew up in Foster in South Gippsland with a population of less than 2000, Jessica moved to Melbourne to study at Monash. She majored in Film and television after initially going into the Arts degree interested in psychology. After graduating from Monash with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) majoring in Film and Television, Jessica has gone on to work in multiple script departments for leading Australian TV networks. As a script coordinator and freelancer, she’s been involved in ‘Playing for Keeps’, ‘Bad Mothers’, ‘Five Bedrooms’ and ‘Informer 3838’. She has been making her mark in society, having produced her own anthology series called Liberty Street. Jessica’s upcoming projects have also received funding from Screen Australia.

In recent years, Jessica was a finalist for both the AWG Monte Miller Awards (2019 & 2020) and the New York International Screenwriting Awards (2020).

Career pathway

2020 – Co-creator & Writer, Liberty Street (TV Series) (8 episodes)
2020 – Script Coordinator, Informer 3838 (TV Series) (2 episodes)
2020 – AWG Monte Miller Awards (Finalist) 2020
2020 – New York International Screenwriting Awards (Finalist) 2020
2019 – Script Coordinator, Playing for Keeps Season 2 (TV Series) (8 episodes)
2019 – Writer, Playing for Keeps “ Sidelines” (Web series) (6 episodes) 2019 – Big Apple Film Festival (Finalist) 2019
2019 – AWG Monte Miller Awards (Finalist) 2019 2019 –  Script Coordinator, Bad Mothers (TV Series) (8 episodes)
2018 –  Script Coordinator, Playing for Keeps (TV Series) (16 episodes)
2018 – Writer, Playing for Keeps “The Goss Boss” (Web Series) (6 episodes) 2018 –  Writer’s Assistant, Jack Irish (TV Series) (1 episode)
2017 – Writers’ Assistant, The Wrong Girl (TV Series) (4 episode)
2016 – Writer and Director, Signs of Life
2014 – Inaugural Excellence in Writing for Performance - Scholarship , NIDA 2014 – National Institute for Dramatic Arts (NIDA), MFA Writing for Performance (2014 -2015)
2012 – Bachelor of Arts (Hons), Monash University

What inspired you to be a writer?

It was just one of the ways that I naturally engaged with the world and understood the world. My mother claims the first story I wrote was when I was five years old, from the point of view of my cat and how it would look like for them to watch a human put on pants. I’ve always tried to put myself in other people's shoes and tried to understand the world through writing. I resisted it for a long time, because it didn't feel like a real career pathway that you could do with your life. I tried to do other things, I started in psychology and going down that path to understand people and their stories. I went in thinking that I'd major in psychology and be a psychologist. I quickly realized I wanted to write about them.

I didn't think that it was a legitimate pathway until Monash, when I did a film unit in my first year and got sucked in.

I think it was Claire Perkins, who was my lecturer at Monash. She pulled me aside and said ‘your essays are amazing, and I love them. You should really think about swapping into a major with the film department’. She definitely encouraged me and that's when I started thinking that this could be something. I started exploring through the course and practicing writing reviews. It wasn't until honours when I realised how much I loved doing this, but that I didn’t want to write about film, I felt I wanted to be more creative.

What do you think is rewarding about being a writer?

It's kind of magic, writing. You’re creating something from nothing. For me, I really love the collaborative nature of filmmaking. I love writing the blueprint of what something is going to be and watching a whole bunch of talented people turn it into a living, breathing thing that's immortalized and enjoyed. I really thought about the ways in which I could contribute to the world and change the world and it just so happens that one of my skills and gifts is the written word. I love that I can somehow transform this into a career, a way to kind of put my voice into the world and say what I want to say.

In my honour’s thesis, I wrote about women in key creative roles in Australian television. I did this huge spreadsheet of all these amazing female writers that I loved. I can now say that in my career, I have literally worked with all those women that I wrote about in my thesis. Some of them are some of my closest friends, my mentors and I’m writing a show with one of them. It’s amazing that these women that I wrote about, I ended up working with them, and learning from them in the real world.

What did you enjoy most at Monash University?

I loved my time at Monash, I immediately felt at home at Clayton. I met one of my best friends at Monash and we're still close. He's gone on to do amazing things and we regularly get together.  I wrote for Lot’s Wife and I was the film editor in my third and fourth year. That was a great experience, writing to deadlines and adhering to certain parameters. I really loved working at Lot's Wife and fell in love with the film department. Lots of the tutors were inclusive and encouraging and I'm still friends with some of them to this day. I was part of the Literature Club, the Poetry Association and I worked at Monash as a swim teacher.

How do you feel your Arts degree has given you practical skills for the workplace?

I think the beauty of an Arts degree is critical thinking. With an Arts degree, you can make connections between history and culture and you come out realising that we're all so connected in different ways across history and time. An Arts degree teaches you to examine what's happening, what you're reading, seeing, viewing and learning how to dissect that material. My writing got stronger from my course, but it was those kinds of broad lateral skills that I think that you walk away with. I did a lot of creative writing courses in the English and literature department.

Do you have any advice for current students wanting to be in your field?

Tenacity. The thing that I would say is that nobody will hand this to you on a platter. There is no direct pathway into being a writer. There's no direct pathway into working in film and television. You need to have the drive and the determination to find your own way to use your voice and find a way to get people to listen to you. Stay strong in that because there is a lot of rejection.

I hate seeing kids think that they can't pursue this because it seems too hard. It is hard, but it's completely worthwhile. If it's what you really want to do, what you're passionate about, then you should go for it no matter what kind of pathway you think it's going to lead to. I mean, when I started Monash, I had no idea that this is where I'd end up.

Find people that you admire, whether you want to get into directing or writing and find a way to contact them. If you show a genuine interest, you can often find people that will support you or give you 10 minutes of their time to talk.  You shouldn't be afraid of doing that, people are not going to give you what you want without you asking for it.

Written by Arts Journalism intern, Cindy Chea, 2020