Jan Steckel

Jan Steckel

Jan Steckel, M.D. is an award winning San Francisco Bay Area-based writer of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, who is also known as an activist in the bisexual community and an advocate on behalf of the disabled and the underprivileged.

One of the most prolific writers/poets today, Steckel has published over a hundred of her short stories, poems and nonfiction pieces in print and in online publications such as Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Red Rock Review, So to Speak, Redwood Coast Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. Beyond the prodigious numbers of awards she has received, her work has been widely reprinted and anthologized. Steckel's writing has been nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes: once for her nonfiction, and once for her poetry.

A strong bilingual background (Steckel is fluent in Spanish as well as English), extensive medical training, and work in underserved communities allow Steckel to tackle subjects that other writers (particularly those from more conventional middle-class backgrounds) aren't always able to cover adequately, and her work in different media (poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction) facilitates a great deal of creative cross-pollination.

Her poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital is available from Zeitgeist Press. She is currently working on a book-length collection of interrelated short stories and on a collection of short humorous first-person essays. Most of the stories and essays have already appeared in print.

She is also a founding member of Woman-Stirred, a queer women's writing collective, along with Nicki Hastie, Julie R. Enszer, and Merry Gangemi.