Jennifer Compton was born in Wellington in 1949. Between the early 1970s and '80s she worked as a playwright in both Australia and New Zealand, with productions on radio and in theatre in both countries. She has written and had produced or published many stage and radio plays and short stories and essays. Her stage play, The Big Picture, which premiered at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney in 1997, was published by Currency Press and also produced in Wellington by Circa and Perth by the Perth Theatre Company. She has won several Australian awards for poetry and has been an invited writer at literary festivals in Australia and internationally.