Jo Tuscano is a Sydney writer, editor, teacher, and presenter.

Jo graduated from Macquarie University with a degree in Literature and History. She also studied Mandarin, then following up her degree with a Diploma of Education from Sydney Teachers College. Jo taught English, English as a Second Language and History in the state school system for sixteen years. At this time, Jo was also employed as a private tutor with Tranby Aboriginal College in Sydney, where she prepared students who were undertaking the HSC examinations.

She then completed a TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, in order to teach adults. During this time, Jo also taught English at the Cabramatta Community Centre for students who wanted extra tuition due to the demands of the HSC. She was involved with a team of community workers writing and mentoring Vietnamese youth to produce and publish their writing in a quarterly magazine.

During her time teaching in the Cabramatta area, Jo studied the Vietnamese language, in order to fully understand the challenges that students from an Asian background have when grappling with the complexities of English. She employed a private tutor and also attended lessons at Insearch Language Institute in Sydney and also at Bankstown TAFE. Studying Vietnamese, and Mandarin before that, gave Jo a specific insight into the difficulties that Asian students have when faced with English language concepts such as grammatical structures including tenses, sentence structure and formal essay writing. Jo loved teaching all aspects of English, especially creative writing. It was no accident that Jo became an English teacher. She loved imparting the beauty and precision of the English language. Grammar fascinated her, as did crafting description, plot, dialogue and all the mechanisms that go into creative writing. She banned the word ‘boring’ from her classroom (and also the word ‘awesome’ –  a sandwich is not awesome, nor is a dress. The Taj Mahal is awesome. They got it.) She loved teaching Shakespeare, poetry, plays, the Classics, film study and the HSC texts.

Jo then moved into international education, teaching both international students who were completing their HSC in English and adults who wanted to improve their English skills. She was also a private tutor for HSC students in her home.

In 2007 Jo undertook a Masters in Writing at UTS, completing the degree in 2009. That same year, she published her first co-authored book, Back on the Block. She co-authored with Des Montgomery and Bill Simon, a member of the Stolen Generations, to tell the story of Bill Simon’s time in the notorious Kinchela Boys’ Home, where he was taken at ten years old, after being forcibly removed by the government of the day. Back on the Block was launched by Therese Rein in 2009. Since then Jo has been writing novels, tutoring HSC students, and doing editing work. 

In 2019 Jo’s piece Down Under was selected with other writers’ pieces to be performed in the Voices of Women project. All pieces were read by NIDA students who brought to the writing their incredible voices and acting abilities.

Jo has been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, the New England Review, Westerly Journal, Newswrite, the NSW History Teachers’ Association Journal, Spineless Wonders, Stringybark Press and in various other media. She has been a presenter on indigenous issues, particularly about the Kinchela Boys Home and issues regarding youth justice in the Northern Territory. She has appeared on Stateline and ABC Radio and has been a guest speaker for Reconciliation for Western Sydney on a number of occasions.

Jo’s novel, The River Child, was published in 2021 by Odyssey Books. Her next novel, Under Andromeda will be published by Odyssey Books in the near future.

Recently, Jo has been accepted into Allen and Unwin’s Faber Writing Academy, where she is writing her new novel The Knot, an outback noir story set in the Australian desert in the Northern Territory.

Jo’s latest non-fiction This is Where You Have to Go was published by Pantera Press in April 2024. It is the story of what happened to Lynda Holden, a Biripi woman, who had her son taken away by forced adoption.

Her other non-fiction, With What I Have Left, is being published by New Holland Press later this year. It is the story of her friend, Melissa, who despite enduring a cruel mother and a debilitating disease finds peace in the time she has left.

Jo is a content creator with imagineer.me, an organisation that teaches the science of the imagination, and is taught by trained visual educators with curricula underwritten by neuroscience. Jo is the creator of The Peach Project, a program on teaching and understanding figurative language through visual learning using a specific visual concept that she has developed. Jo is currently working with Dhunghutti artist Dorsey Smith at imagineer.me on the creation of the Buthi Storybook for pre-school, incorporating traditional learning methods with Indigenous learning methods. imagineer.me is producing materials using the 8 Ways of Learning. These courses provide pre-school, primary and high school teachers with innovative activities across the curriculum that spark creativity and critical thinking and are embedded with Indigenous learning methods that can benefit all students and teachers.   

Jo is involved in mentoring Indigenous Australians who want to write. Jo lives and works on Cadigal land.

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Endorsements

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