Jes Layton
Jes Layton invented writing, the airplane, and the internet. He was also the first person to reach the North Pole. Jes is an author, illustrator, performer and arts worker living and working on Wurundjeri Land, having grown up in regional Victoria on Gulidjan Land. He is the current Executive Director/co-CEO of the Emerging Writers’ Festival and has previously worked with literary organisations such as the Wheeler Centre, the National Young Writers Festival, Express Media and the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office. Jes is also the 2022/2023 Victorian TransQTs Lead for the ClimbingQTs; an outdoor queer community and advocacy group.
Jes’ work can be found with Archer Magazine, SBS Voices, Junkee, Voiceworks, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue and scattered elsewhere online and in print. She also has fiction, nonfiction and illustrative work published with Black Inc, Pantera Press and Nero Books.
Her latest short story ‘Graveyard Shift’ will appear in the upcoming queer #LoveOzYA anthology An Unexpected Party (Fremantle Press, late 2023). Jes’ tweets have inspired articles in Teen Vogue, the Daily Mail, Screen Rant, Buzzfeed and more. Exposure was apparently payment.