About

Jessica Alice is a writer and arts leader from Melbourne’s west living in the Northern Rivers region on the NSW North Coast.

Jessica is Artistic Director of Byron Writers Festival, presented in August at locations in Bangalow and Byron Bay. She is Chair of the National Young Writers Festival, a committee member of the Kat Muscat Fellowship, and a committee member of the MUD Literary Club.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Cultural Leadership from the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Arts Work

Jessica was formerly Chief Executive Officer of Writers SA, the peak organisation for writing and literature in South Australia, and Chair of the Arts Industry Council of South Australia, the state’s independent, sector wide representative arts body.

She has held roles including Program Manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Co-Director of the National Young Writers’ Festival, in Newcastle, New South Wales, and a member of the executive leadership team at Regional Arts Victoria as Marketing & Publicity Manager.

Jessica has been a member of the Creative Industries Think Tank in South Australia, and a member of University of South Australia’s Creative Industries Advisory Panel. Jessica was previously Deputy Chair of the Melbourne International Arts Festival Shadow Board, a Board Member of SYN Media, and a member of the RMIT School of Creative Writing Programming Advisory Committee.

She was elected to the Arts Industry Council SA Executive Committee in 2019, elected Deputy Chair in 2020 and Chairperson in 2021.

In 2018, Jessica was one of 20 arts leaders from Australia and Asia selected to take part in the Australia Council for the Arts’ Future Leaders Program. As part of this program, the Australia Council supported Jessica to undertake a secondment at BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada, in April 2019.

In 2020, she travelled to India with the Australia Council on the India Literature Exploratory, a gathering of four Australian literature and publishing sector professionals on a week-long research, engagement and networking program. Jessica appeared alongside international festival directors at the Jaipur BookMark Festival as part of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Broadcasting

Jessica is a regular guest on ABC Radio. She previously presented and produced 3CR’s Women on the Line—Australia’s longest-running women’s current affairs radio program—and the Spoken Word poetry program for 3CR Melbourne. She presented a regular segment on Triple R’s weekly literature program Aural Text, and was Radio Adelaide Breakfast’s ‘feminist insider’.

Writing & Editorial

Jessica’s poetry, commentary, and criticism is published in The Guardian Australia, Meanjin, Overland, fine print magazine, The Lifted Brow, Metro Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, and Australian Poetry Journal, among others. She has contributed catalogue essays to exhibitions at BLINDSIDE gallery, Mailbox Art Space, MOD., ANAT (Australian Network for Art & Technology), and ACE Open.  Her poetry and short fiction is published in numerous anthologies including Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word (University of Queensland Press) and Mascara Literary Review’s 2022 collection Resilience (Ultimo Press).

She has previously held editorial positions as the Sex & Gender Columnist for Spook Magazine, the Poetry & Short Prose Editor of The Lifted Brow, Poetry Editor of Scum Mag, Literature & Books Editor of Lip magazine, Deputy Online Editor for Kill Your Darlings, and Poetry Editor of Voiceworks.

Jessica acts as a judge of numerous literary prizes and fellowships, including the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, Kat Muscat Fellowship, MUD Literary Prize, Carclew Youth Fellowships, and the 2021 Red Room Poetry Fellowship.

She tweets @jessica_alice_. Photo by Sia Duff.