Jochems was born in
Whangārei in 1994, and grew up on a farm in
Pakaraka. Her father is a beef farmer and her mother is a teacher, and she has two younger brothers. Jochems studied creative writing, first at the
Manukau Institute of Technology and subsequently at the
International Institute of Modern Letters where she completed a Master of Arts. She was the recipient of the
Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing in 2016 for her draft manuscript, which was published as
Baby by
Victoria University Press in 2017. In 2018
Baby was shortlisted for the top fiction award at the
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and received the Hubert Church Award for the best first book. It was also longlisted for the
Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel. In June 2018 Jochems and her mother opened a secondhand bookshop called Book Hound in
Newtown. == References ==