Jackie Bailey

Jackie Bailey is an award-winning author, ordained interfaith minister and funeral celebrant living and working on Dharawal Country. Her debut autofiction novel, The Eulogy, won the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Multicultural Award and was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing.

Jackie works as a non-denominational spiritual care practitioner, supporting people in aged care and palliative care. She is one of the only ordained interfaith ministers in Australia, with a Masters of Theology from The New Seminary, the world’s oldest interfaith seminary.

Jackie’s new creative non fiction, The Outrageous Good Fortune of Living (ABC Books/HarperCollins) sets out practical tools for how to lead a spiritual life without religion.

Jackie is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper how to live spiritually in the modern world. She appears regularly on radio shows, TV and podcasts and at writers’ festivals. When she is not writing Jackie can be found bushwalking, hanging out with her husband and daughter, or helping families to navigate death and dying.

PRAISE FOR THE OUTRAGEOUS GOOD FORTUNE OF LIVING

'If at some stage you have an existential crisis or shake-up, worried about the Meaning of Life, wondering how to fill the hole where your soul would be if you believed you had one, reach immediately for this spiritual first-aid kit.’ - Caroline Baum, journalist, broadcaster and author of Only

Both breezy and intellectual at the same time, this is a generous, gorgeous and practical guide to unearthing your own flavour of spirituality in our modern, troubled era. Moving beyond the constraints of religion, Bailey nonetheless respects the treasured wisdoms of some of history's most enlightened thinkers, exploding boundless hope onto the page. It's the kind of book you'll want to come home to again and again; easy-reading and moreish.’- Cadance Bell, screenwriter, filmmaker and author of Letters to Our Robot Son

'Jackie Bailey's book is part memoir, part treatise on how to live, all heart. Through reflections on her lived experience with religion, family tragedy, parenthood, and her work as an inter-faith minister and funeral celebrant, Jackie offers us something invaluable at a time in which even the most resourced, resilient and confident person can feel lost and overwhelmed - a guide on how to live a life that is meaningful, compassionate and courageous.’ - Dr Rebecca Huntley, social researcher and author, Sassafras: A memoir of love, loss and MDMA therapy

'The simple truth about The Outrageous Good Fortune of Living is that this is an outrageously good book. Erudite, compassionate, funny, and satisfying both artistically and philosophically. Jackie Bailey, the most reverent of non-believers you'd ever meet, wrote an utterly unsentimental ode to beauty and longing, a (not so divine) comedy of looking for salvation in a godless world. Drawing on ancient and scientific wisdoms, she advocates for a meaningful life infused with gratitude and empathy. Even in our turbulent times this book will leave you calmer, and inspired.’- Lee Kofman, author of The Writer Laid Bare

'Jackie Bailey has crafted a story of coming home. It is drawn from tough experience, intellectual rigour, openness, acceptance and humour; from a yearning that drove her toward the best kind of questing and questioning.’ - Ailsa Piper, director, performer and author of For Life

'So beautifully written - so personal - and so compelling. This book will help lots of people.’ - Warren Ward, associate professor of psychiatry and author of Lovers of Philosophy