Writing

Josephine Emery

Born in Cairns, Nth Queensland, Josephine was originally christened, ‘John’. Her early life was spent on a coconut plantation west of Lae, in PNG. The family moved to a back-blocks farm in South Australia. ‘John’ attended boarding school in Adelaide, worked in gold-mining, exploration, and desert construction and forestry before taking a degree and becoming a writer and university teacher. John’s early successes as a writer of gritty, real-life working men’s stories created opportunities for him to adapt them as screenplays: notably ‘Backroads’ for Philip Noyce, ‘Freedom’ for Scott Hicks, ‘Fever’ for Craig Lahiff. He revealed a talent for action and genre movies and marginalised characters. John’s second novel, THE SKY PEOPLE, set in early contact New Guinea in the 1930s was shortlisted for the SA Premier’s Literary Awards in 1986. In 2001 he moved from Adelaide to Sydney to take up Co-Head of Screenwriting at AFTRS. Shifting to Director Literature at the Australia Council John underwent gender transition, emerging as Josephine, and developed a notable career as a change-agent within the literature sector before returning to writing with the 2009 release of her memoir, THE REAL POSSIBILITY OF JOY.