[1] Jacques joined the French Resistance in World War II after his own father, Simon Adlersztejn, was rounded up and deported to Beaune-la-Rolande, eventually dying at Auschwitz.

[4] She then became arts and entertainment editor for The Age, where she ran into conflicts with some of her colleagues as well as theatre critic Len Radic, over a review she wrote.

[14] She has selected writers with the intention of exploring the meaning of truth, including J. M. Coetzee, playwright David Hare, and filmmaker Terence Davies.

[4] She was chairperson of the board of her old school, Methodist Ladies' College, in 2012,[19] when the then principal, Rosa Storelli, was sacked in 2012 over a dispute about her past salary sacrifice arrangements, with an audit suggesting that she had been overpaid more than A$700,000 over ten years.

Her sacking caused anger among many parents, with a public meeting calling for the resignation of the board and the reinstatement of Storelli, and the event was covered widely on Australian media.

[4] In 2015, she was president of the Australian Publishers Association and was appointed to chair the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for fiction and poetry by Tony Abbott.

[25] In 2015, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Monash University, for "her services to Australian publishing, through to her support and promotion of emerging authors, education and the community".