About
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.
Josephine is now writing genre movies from a female perspective. Her script, MAIDEN VOYAGE: ‘a solo yachtswoman, a runaway freighter, a precious cargo: and death stalking her’, is currently with producers. It was funded to first draft by Screen Australia in 2010.
In 2012 she is working with Hollywood script guru, Michael Hauge, on her next Screen Australia funded script: AUSSIE GALS, Kick-ass chicks with trucks, bombs and guns.
She is a financial partner in the comedy, 10 TERRORISTS, which will premiere at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in March, 2012.
Josephine also writes and produces corporate media and produced the notable CHINA HEART transmedia project for Sydney’s Chinese New Year 2011.
You can follow me on Follow @Storythingstory And my career and skills are here Linked In
