Jessica Hatcher grew up in Shropshire, England. She studied Modern Languages at St. Edmund Hall Oxford then spent three years living in London working as a television producer. She got her first ‘break’ writing in 2008, while cycling 5,000 miles through eight countries of Southern and East Africa.
In 2011, after two more years in London, which included a stint at the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, and six months living on a beach in Wales writing satirical fiction, a commission took her back to East Africa and she has been based there as a freelance journalist since.
Jessica’s work has been published in Time, Elle, New Statesman, Vice, Guardian Weekend and Telegraph Weekend magazines, and she writes regularly for the Guardian Global Development. She was a 2014 Pulitzer Center grantee and reporting fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation. In 2013, she was shortlisted for One World Media’s New Voice award.