Jesse was awarded the 2018/19 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship by the Australian Antarctic Division, in collaboration with leading screenwriter Jane Allen (Cleverman, Janet King, Wentworth, Love Child). It was Jesse’s second Antarctic Arts Fellowship (read about her first one) - she is one of only a tiny handful of artists awarded a second fellowship.
This was the journey of a lifetime – setting out on one of the final trips of the Aurora Australis icebreaker from Hobart on 25 October 2018, voyaging for two weeks across 5000km of the world’s roughest oceans, flying in a twin engine aircraft the last few hundred kilometres to Mawson Station – the longest continually operating base on the Antarctic continent.
There was no turning back – Jane and Jesse lived at Mawson for three months, until the ship returned to collect them. Immersed in the reality of life on an Antarctic station – a first for a team of TV writers – they set up a creative hot house, collaborating to research, devise and create the TV drama ANTARCTICA– an authentic, humorous and heartfelt look from the inside at what it’s like to live and work in Antarctica.
They also worked side by side to create and write a junior adventure novel about the first kids’ expedition to Antarctica.
Read more about Jesse and Jane’s adventures on the blog, on Instagram and on Facebook, or read Jesse’s essay ‘A Language for Antarctica: Summer at Mawson’ in Kill Your Darlings.
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