Jessie Tu is a music teacher who has lived in Bondi and taught full time at the Rose Bay independent girls school Kambala.
She was born to a Taiwanese mother and Chinese father. At the age of five, she immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, and then to Sydney. She studied music at university, having played the violin from the age of nine.
Tu's poetry deals with her identity growing up as an immigrant and the shift from childhood to adulthood. She received a six month residency as a Café Poet (a program funded by the government assisted Australian Poetry Organization) at her favourite café in Sydney, WellCo Café in Glebe.
In December 2011, she participated in a National Young Playwrights' Studio workshop where a selected few young Australians from across the nation came together with industry leaders to write, learn and create new works.
In 2020, she released her debut novel, A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing, following a former child violin prodigy.