Jessica Owers is one of the prolific writers in Australian racing. In 2011 and to great acclaim, she published Peter Pan: The Forgotten Story of Phar Lap’s Successor, which earned the Bill Whittaker Award for Best Australian Racing Book. In 2013, she was once again the recipient of this industry award with the release of Shannon: Before Black Caviar, So You Think and Takeover Target. Both books, published by Penguin Random House, have become monuments in the sport.
Jessica has specialised in long-form feature journalism for close to 20 years. She is the senior writer each year for Magic Millions, and for close to three years she was a senior bloodstock journalist for the industry daily The Thoroughbred Report (formerly TDN AusNZ). She is currently a senior contributor to the newly launched industry platform The Straight, and she is published each year in Inglis and Thoroughbred Breeders Australia publications. Her work has appeared in Thoroughbred Racing Commentary, Inside Breeding, Turf Monthly, Breeding&Racing magazine, Horse Country, The Australian, RM Williams OUTBACK magazine and Practical Parenting, among other notable mastheads. Jessica is also a committed contract writer and has ghostwritten a number of publications for private clients. Her commitment to deadlines and her work ethic have made her one of the most lucrative ‘writers for hire’.
In 2023, Jessica was one of three finalists in the national Kennedy Awards for Racing Writer of the Year, in lieu of her reporting of the closure of Singapore racing. Her work is read around the world and her byline is built on truth, honesty and goodwill in storytelling.
She is currently writing her third book, due for release by Penguin Random House in late 2025.
published work
Jessica’s work has been both award-winning and extensively published in racing and equestrian fields. From human interest features to horse biographies, she has tackled racing, wagering, bloodstock, industry profiles and much more. She has interviewed the likes of Hedley Thomas, investigative reporter and brain behind the roof-raising podcast ‘The Teacher’s Pet’, as well as Jason Scott, Katie Page-Harvey, Lee Freedman, Joseph O’Brien and so on. Click the button to read some of Jessica’s vast portfolio of printed and online work.
about jessica
Jessica was born in Cork but migrated to Australia when less than a year old. From then until the age of 10, she grew up in Sydney with a typical Aussie childhood spent at the beach, out camping and on long road trips. At the age of 10, she relocated back to Ireland where she completed high school before moving to Scotland for five years to achieve tertiary qualifications. At the University of Stirling, she completed a combined honours BSc. Environmental Science & Media across four years. Thereafter, she returned to Sydney.
Jessica worked in subediting and staff-writer roles at Breeding & Racing magazine and RM Williams OUTBACK before going freelance. In 2011, she published the first of her two books, and her career has since been carved out of contract and freelance work for some of the leading industry mastheads in Australian racing. All of this has been juggled with full-time motherhood. Julien was born in 2013 and Charlotte followed in 2016. Jessica is married to Sydney restaurateur Maurizio Lombardo, whose La Spiaggia restaurant in Coogee is nothing short of a local institution, continually operated by the family for over 30 years.
For Jessica, writing is a craft that goes beyond professional boundaries. She is a regular participant in workshops and in-person courses at Writing NSW, and she is a diligent reader. For years she has kept a notebook with all the best writing she has come across, and her favourite author is Charles W. Bean, who wrote OnThe Wooltrack in 1911 and The Darling of the Dreadnought in 1912. Jessica has also become a renowned historian in Australian racing, specialising in racing of old, and she has an enviable racing library dating back to 1834.
Outside of professional pursuits, Jessica is known for her adventures with Julien and Charlotte, whom she has taken to all sorts of places and educated widely on Australian history and the natural world. Jessica loves to kayak, and she achieved her boat licence in 2023. It goes without saying that she is an accomplished horsewoman and, early in her adult life, she worked as a riding instructor at Centennial Park and Glenworth Valley. Up until recently, she was the owner of a magnificent off-track thoroughbred, Moxie’s Halo, who sadly died in 2022. Jessica’s life is full of animals and wildlife to support her respect for the bush and the natural environment. The family dog is almost 12 and the family cat is nearly 20, and her front garden is full of wild birds.
books
Despite a consistent career in racing journalism, Jessica is best known for her books, and the biographies of both Peter Pan and Shannon stand as the monuments of her professional life. Peter Pan was published in 2011 after six years of research, and it was an exciting new title for Penguin Random House, which threw support behind this new female voice in horse racing. Peter Pan was award-winning and it’s still earning royalties to this day. The first print run, which featured beautifully coloured plates, is rare these days, so much so that Singleton Public Library won’t allow its copy to be loaned out. Jessica is grateful to this book for how far it carried her career in those early years. She remembers countless hours driving the quiet roads up and down to Singleton, and Sundays spent trawling the newspaper reels at the State Library of NSW. Her research, all boxed up at home, was relentless.
In 2013, Shannon was released as the second of this biography series. Set in the 1940s, it was a mature book with beautiful storytelling. The writing and research took less than two years as Jessica travelled to Los Angeles, Kentucky, Saratoga and the Hunter Valley to accurately recreate the life of this incredible horse. Shannon was widely read as a worthy sequel and it proved a fascinating and accurate look into wartime Australia and post-war America, involving such names as Hollywood mogul Louis B. Meyer and champion racehorses Bernborough and Flight.
In late 2023, Jessica began writing her third book for Penguin Random House and it will be released in late 2025. Details are forthcoming, but click on the button to learn more about Peter Pan and Shannon in the meanwhile.