Recently, we’ve been introducing everyone on the 2024 EWF Team!! This week, meet Jess Zanoni! She is back in 2024 as our Program Coordinator after joining EWF in 2023. Jess is a writer and a musician, and she sat down with us to answer our burning questions.

Howdy Jess! We’re so lucky to have you back on the EWF24 team for your second year as Program Coordinator! We’ve obviously had a year to get to know you, but we’ve never introduced you officially – tell us about yourself, Jess! 

It’s nice to be back for another year 🙂

I’m Jess, and I make music, write, and read.  I love walkin’ fast n far, & swimming in the ocean.

What are you most excited about for your second year at EWF? 

I’ve just finished reading the near-400 artist applications we’ve received this year. I’m so impressed by the caliber of ideas this year. We are lucky to have so many amazing people interested in this festival, so I am excited to meet so many of them and work together to platform their work and bring their ideas to life.

Have you got any creative outlets of your own? We’d love to hear about it! 

I make music in a band called Arbes, and are (fingers crossed) releasing our debut record this year. I’m also currently finishing my debut solo record under my alias Za Noon. Otherwise, I’ve just started a writing residency at a public secondary school, where I am beginning work on my first novel.

EWF is a lit fest, which means we’re obliged to ask what kind of literature catches your attention?

I love literature that is sensory and cinematic, and that explores the intimacies of one’s inner life, and close relationships with others. 

I also love literature that is strange, dark and funny, such as Bud Smith’s new novel Teenager that was my favourite book of last year.

 
Finally, what’s been cluttering your bedside table or filling up your watchlist lately?

I recently finished Nothing To See by Pip Adam which was so strange and exceptional, and I also finally read This House of Grief by Helen Garner which was as I expected, masterful and disturbing. Otherwise I just finished watching The Curse which was a wild ride, and my Mum and I are currently immersed in the Netflix adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe (a book I should have actually read before watching the show).