ABOUT

Jessica Jiji was born and raised in New York City where her Iraqi father settled after being a stateless refugee for a dozen years. He imbued in her deep pride in Arab culture and huge respect for the immigrant hustle.  She built a career writing speeches and producing documentaries, learning along the way that entertainment is as important as diplomacy to world peace. She writes from offbeat perspectives which turn out to be universal after all. Two of her novels have been published by HarperCollins and translated into Italian, and another won the 2021 Indies Today Best Humor Award. She has benefited enormously from studying with Jill Chamberlain and learning her transformative Nutshell Technique, as well as from training with Roadmap Writers on scripts that earned Gold Prize in the Page International Screenwriting Awards among other accolades. Skateboarding with her three sons is more than worth the 20 stitches and nine-inch metal plate holding her arm together.