Jenessa Abrams

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Location
New York
School
New York University, Columbia University
Expertise
New York Food Scene, Bakeries, International Dining
  • In 2021, Jenessa left New York to travel the world in search of food that challenges expectations. She's written about and studied food trends, history, and evolution in New York, California, France, Israel, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.
  • Jenessa broke into the world of food writing when she stumbled across an all-female run pastry pop-up in Sausalito, California selling pastries from behind the counter of an old-school Italian restaurant.
  • She's been awarded fellowships and grants for her writing from MacDowell, The New York Public Library, the Ucross Foundation, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, and Columbia University.

Experience

Jenessa is a food writer, fiction writer, literary translator, and practitioner of Narrative Medicine. Jenessa's work has been featured in Eater, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review, Guernica, BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and anthologized in Off Assignment's Letter to a Stranger (Algonquin, 2022). She has taught writing at Columbia University, Rutgers University, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and serves on the Advisory Board of Off Assignment, a magazine of literary travel writing, and 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.

Education

Jenessa has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Madness as Metaphor from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. In 2017, she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiction and Literary Translation from Columbia University. In 2019, she earned her Master of Science degree from the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University.

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Stories By Jenessa Abrams