Juliet Jacques

Juliet Jacques (born 3 October 1981) uses the transgender experience as a writer, journalist and filmmaker, including Jacques' transition to a trans woman, as well as her short fiction and cultural criticism, but also for critical writing on football.

Jacques founds and presents online Resonance FM art discussion show Suite (212). She appeared on two episodes of the Media Democracy podcast, discussing UK media coverage of trans and non-binary people over the last decade.

Jacques was a founding member of The Justin Campaign, created in memory of Justin Fashanu, later renamed to Football vs. Homophobia as the UK's first major campaign against homophobia in football.

Education
Jacques was born in Redhill, Surrey and grew up in nearby Horley. She attended Reigate Grammar School for two years, then to a local comprehensive school, followed by the College of Richard Collyer in Horsham, West Sussex, studying History at the University of Manchester and then Literature and Film at the University of Sussex. Jacques completed a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing at the University of Sussex in 2019.

Writing
Jacques began writing about film for a publication called Filmwaves, Cineaste and other film publications, while working in a data entry job in Brighton. In 2007, she published a book on English avant-garde author Rayner Heppenstall for Dalkey Archive Press.

A memoir, entitled Trans, was published by Verso Books in 2015, based on a series of blog posts called 'A Transgender Journey' that Jacques wrote for the Guardian online in 2010-12, chronicling gender reassignment on the NHS. The audiobook was narrated by trans actor Rebecca Root. Her journalism, essays and art criticism about trans subjects were collected in an anthology, Front Lines, published by Cipher Press in 2022.

Jacques also wrote a regular column for the New Statesman between 2011 and 2015 on literature, film, art and football, and for Frieze, The London Review of Books and other publications, including a section to Sheila Heti's book Women in Clothes, which was published in 2014.

A short story collection, Variations was publised by Influx Press in 2021. A second collection, The Woman in the Portrait: Collected Stories 2008-2024, was published by Cipher Press in 2024.

An illustrated novella Monaco was published by Toothgrinder Press in 2023. self-described as 'a kind of travelogue, a photo album and a set of bitter-sweet love letters ... inspired by André Breton's Nadja and my love of proto-Surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire'.

Film
Jacques has made three short films: Approach/Withdraw (2016), co-directed with artist Ker Wallwork; You Will Be Free (2017) about the legacy of the HIV/AIDS crisis, narrated by Anna-Louise Plowman; and Revivification (2018), a documentary about queer and feminist art and politics in Ukraine. She also played herself in Josh Appignanesi's film Female Human Animal (2018).

Awards
Jacques was on the longlist for The Orwell Prize in 2011 for 'A Transgender Journey'. In 2012, she was selected as one of The Independent on Sunday Pink List's most influential journalists, and was also included in the list for 2013, 2014 and 2015. She was also included in Attitude magazine's list of 101 LGBTQ+ trailblazers in 2024. In 2016, her book Trans: A Memoir was shortlisted for Polari LGBT Literary Salon's First Book Prize Award. In 2019, Val McDermid chose her as one of ten British LGBT+ writers for the British Council's International Literary Showcase.

Personal life
Jacques plays football, and won the Shield with the Brighton Bandits at the 2008 IGLFA World Cup. Jacques played for Surrey women in a friendly against the Afghanistan development team in May 2022, and spent the 2022-23 season with Clapton Community FC.

For several years Jacques worked as an administrator in the NHS, during the period when the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was implemented. Made redundant in 2014, Jacques wrote about this period of the NHS in a personal essay for the New Statesman.

In 2020 Jaques appeared on the BBC's Christmas University Challenge as part of the University of Manchester team, which reached the final.