Jessica Chapnik Kahn

Jessica (“Jess”) Chapnik Kahn is an Argentinian Australian singer-songwriter, actor, poet and writer. Jess with her close family, emigrated to Australia as a small child. Jess learned and studied English by watching the popular ABC Children’s most successful televised show called Play School.

Jess has worked not just in theatre but television and film. Jess authored many bestselling children’s books as well as releasing successful music albums, performing and collaborating on multiple musical projects with many of Australia’s finest artists.

Jess published her first children’s book, Lenny and the Ants (2019). Lenny was illustrated by the talented and popular artist Matthew Martin. In the same year, Jess released her a new collection of poems and drawings titled MADRE. Jess wrote MADRE whilst in the depths of her unexpected postpartum with her much loved first child, Levi. She also a sister for Levi whom Jess named Shemi.

Jess co-wrote a memoir titled A Repurposed Life, that was longlisted for an ABIA Award for Biography Book of the Year 2021.

Jess played in the bands of Ben Lee, Sarah Blasko, Old Man River and the Kahn Brothers. She produced four albums with Ben, including the soundtrack for the Australian film The Square that was directed by Nash Edgerton. The album was praised and won a nomination for an ARIA Fine Arts Award for "Best Original Soundtrack". Jess went on to create her own musical project under the name Appleonia. She released and produced two albums, including her much-loved Appleonia song, She is the Sun.

Jess trained for two years as an actor in New York City at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School founded by David Mamet. On her return to Australia, Jess acted in the role of ABC television drama, Home and Away.

Jess lives with her husband and their two much loved Levi and Shemi in Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach.

On the tragic and unforgettable day of December 14, 2025, Jess took her daughter, Shemi, now a five-year-old to their regular joyful annual Hanukkah celebration that always took place on Sydney’s popular Bondi Beach with its beautiful and well-surfed waves. Shema and Jess had only just arrived to join the crowd of hundreds in celebration of Hanukkah when she heard loud gunshots .

6:41 pm and in just 44 seconds, Australia’s deadliest and shocking terrorist attack, a horrific and inexplicable massacre left fifteen Jewish people brutally slain. Some 40 people were shot and wounded and dozens were hospitalised in ER in critical and life-threatening condition. Jess wrote an extraordinary moving and heartfelt feature where she explained how she protecting her young daughter and innocent beloved little girl by “Shielding EVERY SINGLE INCH OF SHEMI’S SMALL BODY”.

“I did not want her to die in the hell out there. I did not want her to die with the screams and the wailing and the shots and the sirens and the flying bits of of flesh and bone that that were spraying over both us. I wanted her to die from the inside, in the magnificence of who she was, in the world of her choosing,,,And then, after an eternity, by some stroke of miracle, we survived”.

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