Creative Writing

Jenny writes across genres, focusing primarily on poetry and nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Tin House, ZYZZYVA, Figure 1, Bellevue Literary Review, Atticus Review and other journals and anthologies; select poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Her writing contains themes of early loss and grief, the inheritance of trauma, and the intersection of science and art. Her work is influenced by both Western and Chinese literature, mythology, and culture, as well as her background as a scientist.

She is completing her first poetry collection, titled Focal Point. Written during her Ph.D. training in Cancer Biology, she thinks of this collection as a second dissertation. An earlier version was a Jake Adam York Prize finalist.

She is also writing a series of essays about science, loss, and identity; translating her late mother’s memoir from Chinese into English; and working on a second chapbook titled Machine Learning, which explores the influence of modern technology, the ways in which society acts as a machine, and how we as its members have internalized its rules.

Science Consulting

Jenny Qi received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Science (Cancer Biology) from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2017, where she studied novel drug candidates in preclinical models of pancreatic cancer. She does science communication consulting for life science and biopharma, specializing in oncology content.

She has worked as a science & medicine editor and strategist at UCSF, American Journal Experts, Doximity and elsewhere, creating and editing scientific manuscripts, grant proposals, news articles, blogs and personal essays, podcasts, slide decks, and more. Topics have included oncology, health insurance, diversity in medicine, medical humanities, hospice & palliative care, and mental health in academia. Her articles may be found here, and more information can be found on LinkedIn.

She was a co-founder, co-host and producer of the science storytelling podcast Bone Lab Radio.

She currently lives in San Francisco. In her spare time, she enjoys photography, makes clay and felt creatures, draws elaborate charts, and takes care of her plants.