Jan Steckel is a 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. 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. Steckel's writing has been nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes: once for her nonfiction, and once for her poetry.

Education and medical career

Steckel's undergraduate work was at Harvard-Radcliffe University, where she earned her B.A. in English literature with an emphasis on creative writing in 1983. Later she studied Golden Age Spanish Literature at Oxford University on a Henry Fellowship through 1984. In 1989 she took a few premedical courses while conducting research in the neuroscience laboratory. Steckel attended Yale University School of Medicine, where she picked up her M.D. in May 1994. Steckel's speciality was in pediatrics, in which she completed her residency at Children's Hospital Boston in July 1997. Board-Certified in Pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics in 1997, Steckel obtained her Physician and Surgeon License from the Medical Board of California in 1997; she became a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000. Steckel served for a time in the Peace Corps as a volunteer in the Dominican Republic; upon her return to the States, she cared for Spanish-speaking families in California at a county hospital and at a large HMO. After she left medicine permanently in 2001, her experiences as a pediatrician continued to inform her work.

Personal life

Steckel grew up in Santa Monica, where she attended Lincoln Junior High School (now Lincoln Middle School), studying journalism. She went to Santa Monica High School. Steckel, openly bisexual, lives in Northern California with her husband Hew Wolff, who has collaborated on some of her poetry.

Works

Books

Other writing

Poetry

Fiction

Awards