Jessica Bell is an Australian-born award-winning author, poet, singer-songwriter, writing and publishing coach, and graphic designer based in Athens, Greece. She is the co-founder and publisher of Vine Leaves Press, was the singer of the Athens-based indie band Keep Shelly in Athens, and is a freelance writer and editor for English Language Teaching publishers including Macmillan Education and Education First.
Her bestselling Writing in a Nutshell series gives working writers compact, demonstration-based craft references. Titles include Adverbs and Cliches in a Nutshell: Demonstrated Subversions of Adverbs and Cliches into Gourmet Imagery; Show and Tell in a Nutshell; The Six Senses in a Nutshell: Demonstrated Transitions from Bleak to Bold Narrative; and Polish Your Fiction. The series teaches by transforming weak example passages into stronger ones rather than by abstract rules, which is why it works for writers across genres.
Her memoir Dear Reflection: I Never Meant to Be a Rebel (Vine Leaves Press, 2017) recounts her turbulent youth and early adulthood as the daughter of Erika Bach and Demetri Vlass, founders of the Melbourne indie bands Ape the Cry and Hard Candy. Both parents were loving but struggled with addiction and mental health, and the memoir traces Bell's own journey through depression, self-destruction, and the creative life she built from it. She has also published five novels including Bitter Like Orange Peel, How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness, and Fabric, plus three poetry collections.
She co-founded Vine Leaves Literary Journal with Dawn Ius in late 2011 to give the vignette, a forgotten literary form, a dedicated home, and ran the journal for six years until 2017, when she folded it into Vine Leaves Press to focus on book-length publishing. Her work and interviews have appeared in Writer's Digest, Publisher's Weekly, The Guardian, and on ABC Radio National's Life Matters and Poetica. She is also CEO of Independent Publishing Assistance and a sought-after book cover designer.
