Jenessa Abrams is the director of Narrative Medicine Rounds, a lecture/performance series at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and a lecturer in the Narrative Medicine Program. Her work is interdisciplinary, moving between fiction, literary criticism, creative non-fiction, and literary translation.
Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Electric Literature, Eater, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, and anthologies including Off Assignment’s Letter to a Stranger (Algonquin).
Abrams 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. Her French translations have been published in The Brooklyn Rail and The Offing.
She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a 2023 NBCC Emerging Critic Fellow. She serves on the Advisory Board of Off Assignment, a magazine of literary travel writing, and from 2021 to 2025 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.
Following her Master of Fine Arts degree, Abrams earned a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She is a practitioner of Narrative Medicine and consults with advocacy nonprofits, including Moms Do Care, which provides support for pregnant and parenting people impacted by substance use disorder, and Open Doors, a disability justice organization for Black and Brown wheelchair users.
Her writing on anxiety dreams, motherhood, and food (not necessarily in that order) can be found on Substack.
She is represented by Annie DeWitt of ENLIVEN ENDEAVORS