Jenessa Abrams, M.F.A., M.S.

Jenessa Abrams is a writer of literary criticism, culinary arts, fiction, and literary translation. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, and anthologies including Off Assignment’s Letter to a Stranger (Algonquin, 2022). She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the National Book Critics Circle, MacDowell, The New York Public Library, the Ucross Foundation, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA in fiction and literary translation and her MS in
Narrative Medicine. 

Abrams has taught writing across academic and community spaces including the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Rutgers University, Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, and Columbia University, where she currently teaches in the M.S. Narrative Medicine Program. Her writing focuses on reproductive justice, mental illness, and relationships of caregiving. Abrams serves on the Board of Directors of New Neighbors Partnership, a New York-based non-profit that helps newly arrived refugees connect to local community resources.