J. M. (Jane Marianne) Stevens was one of five daughers of Ernest James Stevens, an independent MLA for the Warrego and Logan from 1878-1893, and MLC to 1920 as well as Managing Director of the Brisbane Courier. Her mother was Mrs A. C. Stevens nee Jackson from a pioneering Victorian pastoral family. Stevens was the sister of Maymie Ada Hamlyn-Harris, also a writer and convenor of the Lyceum Club literary circle and of Joan Marguerite Stevens.
Stevens was a freelance journalist and her articles and short stories appeared in all the leading magazines and weeklies in Australia and New Zealand in the earlier part of her life. In later years Stevens wrote a long series of nature studies for the Sunday Mail. Stevens was also a successful radio writer; her work was broadcast on Brisbane radio stations. She also wrote a play for the amateur theatre.
(Source: 'Mrs. Hamlyn-Harris (Maymie Ada)', A Biographical Record of Queensland Women (1939)).
