Jill Jones has worked in a number of different fields, including legal publishing, journalism, government information, public policy and arts administration, and has also worked freelance as a writer and editor. Her involvement with writing and publishing poetry began in the late 1980s, when she was a co-founder of the gay and lesbian imprint Black Wattle Press, and a member of the collective producing Refractory Girl, at that stage Australia’s longest running feminist magazine. Her first book, The Mask and the Jagged Star, appeared from the New Zealand publisher Hazard Press in 1992. It was well received in both Australia and New Zealand, winning the Mary Gilmore Award in 1993. She has since published eight poetry collections, including Screens Jets Heaven: New and Selected Poems, winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize in 2003. She is currently a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.