Jessica Ngo

Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Creative Writing, Pepperdine University
Master of Professional Writing (MPW) in Creative Nonfiction, University of Southern California (USC)

Jessica Ngo is a memoirist. She writes about food, twinship, intercultural and interracial relationships, and motherhood. Her writing has appeared in Epicurious, TASTE, The Counter, Cuisine Noir, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harvard Review Online, and elsewhere. She has been a Writer in Residence for PEN America's Pen in the Classroom program and was a 2022-2023 James Beard Foundation Legacy Network Advisee.

She has been teaching at Otis since Fall 2009.

• Teaching Excellence Award: 2017
• Otis Faculty Development Grants: Spring 2018, Spring 2019, & Spring 2023
• Otis Assessment, Research, and Scholarship (OARS) Grants: Fall 2015 & Fall 2017

• “Kwame Onwuachi is Putting African Diasporic Cuisines in Conversation.” Epicurious. 13 July 2022.
• “A Quarter Nigerian, but Fully Plantain.” The Republic: A Journal of Nigerian Affairs. 15 June 2022.
• “A Heritage Dessert Platter for my French-Vietnamese-Nigerian-American Sons.” Epicurious. 5 May 2022.
• “Publish the Plantain: Why this Venerable Global Fruit Deserves a Book of its Own.” The Counter. 21 January 2022.
• “What Do Photo-Free Cookbooks Offer 21st Century Readers?” Stained Page News. 29 Oct. 2021.
• “Who gets to call themselves a food writer? The pandemic made it clear: We all do.” The Counter. 12 July 2021.
• “When In Doubt, Plantain Scramble.” TASTE. 22 June. 2021.
• “Los Angeles.” Dispatches from a Pandemic. Harvard Review Online. Dec. 6. 2020.
• “Identical in Every Way.” Tiny Love Story in Modern Love section of New York Times. 17 March. 2020.
• “Dolls, Brown Like Us: A Chronology.” Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. 22 July 2019.
• “Food Justice for All.” Artillery. May/ June 2019 issue. 
• “Bullying Arts Education.” Op-Ed Poetry Pages. Los Angeles Times. 29 Aug. 2014.