Interview with Josephine Emery

Josephine Emery is an acclaimed Australian writer, screenwriter, and former media strategist whose storied career spans literature, film, and advocacy. Born on a coconut plantation in New Guinea and raised on a sheep farm in South Australia, she brings a rich, grounded perspective to her work, both artistic and personal. She has served in prominent roles such as Director of Literature at the Australia Council for the Arts and Head of Screenwriting at the Australian Film, TV, and Radio School. Her film credits include Freedom (1982), Fever (1988), and The Coming (1981), and she has contributed extensively as a features journalist and script editor. Josephine is the author of The Real Possibility of Joy: A Personal Journey from Man to Woman (2009), a deeply personal memoir that was shortlisted for the 2010 Nita Kibble Award. In this groundbreaking work, she sought to normalize the transgender experience and offer readers insight into the inner world of gender transition.

 

Now living a quiet life in a rural village of 1,200 people, Josephine grows her own vegetables, plays blues guitar, and crafts bespoke furniture from reclaimed timber. Though no longer active in the publishing or film industries, she continues to create, write, and reflect, finding joy and peace in her surroundings. A late-in-life transitioner, Josephine began her gender journey in her late 50s, facing immense challenges but ultimately embracing authenticity. With wit, resilience, and wisdom, she remains a powerful voice on identity, creativity, and the soulful art of becoming oneself. 

 

Monika: Hello, Josephine! I'm truly delighted to have you here today.

Josephine: Hi, Monika. It’s a little strange for me being asked to do this interview. I seem to have moved on a lot in my life since my gender history was a real concern of mine. Or writing, for that matter.

Monika: What does daily life look like for you these days?

Josephine: I’m 65 years old. I transitioned around the age of 58-59. Second Saturn Return to be astrologically specific. I’ve reached the point where I can say goodbye to the need to identify myself as a writer. I now live in a village of 1200 people, grow my own vegetables, and make bespoke furniture from reclaimed timber.
I fill in as editor of my local newspaper when the editor’s away. I’m getting better at blues guitar: playing slide, bottleneck, resonator. I’m catching up with the things I didn’t do enough of in the previous 65 years!

Monika: As a screenwriter, who or what shaped your craft? Any writers or films you'd call inspirations?

Josephine: I learnt to write movies by watching and rewatching Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. I also love Billy Wilder’s scripts (and his direction). I still laugh out loud through ‘Some Like It Hot’. It’s the only drag movie I’ve ever liked! But the best dramatic writer I learnt from was William Shakespeare. That man knew how to nail an audience!

Monika: You've written both books and scripts. What's the real difference between the two, in your experience?

Josephine: A script is nothing until it’s produced. It’s merely a template. A book is a book the moment you finish writing it. A movie script has to complete its story in 100 minutes. A book can go on as long as you can hold the audience spellbound. A book is something you write and wrestle with alone.
A movie script (once the first draft is finished) is something you co-create with director, producer, key actors. A book takes place in the reader’s mind. A movie takes place on a screen in front of you. The differences are vast.

Monika: Do any autobiographical elements find their way into your scripts?

Josephine: I’m very happy to say, No! :-)

The chainsaw of reality.

Monika: Of everything you've written for the screen, which script are you proudest of?

Josephine: The last one I completed. ‘Maiden Voyage’. “A solo yachtswoman, her boat sinking in Antarctic waters. A runaway freighter bearing down on her. Once aboard she finds the crew is dead. Its cargo is precious beyond belief... and death is stalking her.”
It’s my response to ‘Runaway Train’, 1985, Jon Voight starring, which is based on a screenplay by the great Japanese director: Akira Kurosawa. ‘Maiden Voyage’ will probably never be produced.

Monika: Your book “The Real Possibility of Joy: A Personal Journey from Man to Woman” (2009) tells your own transition story. What made you decide to write it?

Josephine: Above all, I want to ‘normalize’ the process of gender change. I wrote for non-gender variant people to get inside the shell of someone having to go through the process, to feel it from within and so understand it as part of the full range of human expression on this planet. I want people like ourselves to be able to feel whole, complete, and part of the human race again.

Monika: Has transitioning changed the way you approach writing, whether scripts or books?

Josephine: Yes. There’s a far deeper tonal, emotional range now. I’m prepared to go places I was trying to keep locked up when I was still hiding myself from others...and from myself. Mind you, the price has been that my new work, with the exception of ‘The Real Possibility....’ is no longer attractive to publishers. Possibly because I shift the transgender experience into the centre, rather than on the periphery, of the story.
I have a new novel, ‘The Soul’s Code’ and it presses too many buttons in publishers for them to feel comfortable with it. They tell me ‘it’s beautifully written but there’s no market for it’. Thank you, guys.

Monika: Let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Josephine: Originally on a coconut plantation on the north coast of the tropical island of New Guinea. Then we shifted to a sheep farm on the southeast coast of South Australia. I grew up in the country and learnt many of the skills that are now coming back to me here in this very rural village.

Josie's guitar.

Monika: When did you first sense that being a boy, or a man, wasn't who you were?

Josephine: I was 4 years old when I first saw, without a doubt, that I was a girl. But it was 1951. I had no one to turn to, no reference point. So I hid my secret knowledge for the next 50 years or so.

Monika: School, college, university, for many transgender girls, that stretch is remembered as the hardest, full of discrimination. Was it the same for you?

Josephine: No. I masqueraded very successfully as a boy! No one knew a thing. I was a bright kid and by the time I was 14 I was also athletic. I hid myself away.

Monika: So when did you actually transition into life as a woman? I'm curious how difficult it was, whether you had support from family or friends, and what it meant for your career.

Josephine: This is all documented in ‘The Real Possibility...” I finally accepted the reality of my gender after my father died. I was about 56. I was in total turmoil. I was living on pills and booze and trying to hold down the job as Head of a teaching department at a Film School. I was already divorced, and my second partner left me. I was alone. No support. It was very difficult. I took a new job, as Director of a government arts strategy unit and I finally came out there. My change had no obvious effect on my job.

Monika: Modern cosmetic surgery has made it possible to transition even in one's late 50s or 60s. Do you think that's genuinely realistic, and what advice would you give transgender women considering it at that age?

Josephine: Well, that’s me. Advice? Do it! But get yourself super-fit beforehand because there will be a lot of surgical downtime. I was 10 hours under the knife in Thailand for my facial surgery. And get cashed up. It will cost a packet. I estimate it cost me $100,000 all up: from electrolysis through hormones, reassignment surgery, breast surgery, facial surgery, &c. But do it.

Monika: Back when you were transitioning, did you have any transgender role models to look up to? And how much did you actually know about transgenderism at the time?

Josephine: Role models were almost all negative. I walked out of Almodovar’s movie, ‘All About My Mother’. It relentlessly portrayed us as loser junkies and hookers. Thank you, Pedro! There were no good role models so I decided to turn myself into one.

Monika: If you had to name one thing, what was hardest about coming out?

Josephine: Losing the love of my children.

Monika: What's your favorite part of being a woman?

Josephine: Female friendships are wonderful!

Josie steps out.

Monika: Have you ever been married? I'd love to hear how you think about love in your life.

Josephine: Married for 20 years. Another relationship for 10. Then I changed. Confusion and one-night stands followed. I don’t know the answer. I don’t seek another person’s love. I feel complete in myself. But I do yearn for soul companionship. But that’s not necessarily in a marriage! Put me down as, ‘confused’.
Monika: Zooming out, how would you describe the situation of transgender women in Australian society today?
Josephine: On the whole, I think we’re doing quite well. We’re finally emerging as a recognizable group of people, sometimes that annoys me, I just want to be myself, not a member of a group.
But I have complete acceptance here in this little country town. Everyone knows me, knows my past. It’s not a problem. I think if we present ourselves well, as credible citizens, then that’s how we will be accepted. My TG colleagues all have fulfilling lives.

Monika: In the US, more transgender women have reached real visibility and even celebrity status lately, think of Lana Wachowski in film-directing, Jenna Talackova in modeling, Kate Bornstein in academic life, Laura Jane Grace in music, or Candis Cayne in acting. Are you seeing the same shift in Australia?

Josephine: Yep. There are more of us around and more and more our gender history is less and less an issue.

Monika: And yet we still hear devastating news about transgender women being beaten or killed. What do you think it would take to stop that?

Josephine: There are horrible stories of all sorts of people being murdered! One of the shocks of going from man to woman is to discover the essential vulnerability of womanhood.
I think there is something to be addressed within the male psyche that is prone to act out violent impulses on people it perceives as ‘other’. As long as a particular group is perceived as ‘other’, as ‘not like us’, then those violent impulses are given haven. Hitler traded on it. We have to find our common humanity.

Glamour days.

Monika: Do you see yourself as politically engaged, and do you think transgender women could genuinely shape politics?

Josephine: I’m not ‘involved’ in politics. But every breath I take is political in the sense that I live my difference proudly, unashamedly and I do not step back from it. ‘Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me, God,’ as Martin Luther is supposed to have said to the Inquisition.

Monika: You've said in past interviews that Christianity and Islam have never sat comfortably with gender variance. Why do you think that is?

Josephine: They are monolithic, paternalistic, and judgmental. CG Jung pointed out that patients who presented to him with a sexual problem invariably had a spiritual problem and vice versa. To be transgender is to live in the reality of the fluidity of the human essence, the soul. We are a daily contradiction to their most basic and rigid beliefs.

Monika: How connected are you to your local LGBT community?
Josephine: No.
Monika: Would you say you're a happy woman today?
Josephine: Yes. I have moments of quiet and intense joy when I am one with all creation. That takes some beating!
Monika: Josephine, it was a pleasure to interview you. Thanks a lot!

All the photos: courtesy of Josephine Emery.

© 2013 - Monika Kowalska

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