Jessica Jiji has worked for over a decade as news writer at the United Nations covering breaking international developments.  Before the UN, she worked as a freelance journalist, including at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which serves as the backdrop for Diamonds Take Forever. While working for another radio outlet – called Undercurrents – she produced a segment which won a Polk Award for the reporter who covered it. In addition to writing Diamonds Take Forever, she is the co-author of three feature-length screenplays: Miss Interpreter, a romantic-comedy-political-thriller about a young UN translator who accidentally stumbles on love and adventure; Queen of the CIA, a screwball comedy about the misadventures of a gay fashion designer recruited by the Agency; and I Married a Shaman, a romantic comedy about a young Korean-American woman whose white-bread husband takes up her mother’s traditional Asian religion – to extremes. Miss Interpreter was optioned under the original title “Force for Peace” by Lantern Pictures. She’s held numerous other jobs less glamorous than out-of-work screenwriter, including garbage man (the preferred term is ‘sanitation engineer’), used-clothing salesgirl at a funky downtown boutique and barmaid at a dive in Chinatown. She was born and raised in New York City where she stills live with her husband Jeffrey and their two sons, Jake Latif and Kevin Nassim.