Emi Nietfeld
![Nietfeld_Emi_7 Image of Emi in a black dress looking at the camera.](https://mentalhealthjournalism.org/wp-content/uploads/bb-plugin/cache/Nietfeld_Emi_7-square.jpg)
United States
Freelance Journalist and Author
2024-2025
Emi Nietfeld is the author of “Acceptance,” a critically acclaimed memoir of her journey through foster care, homelessness, and the troubled teen system. Nietfeld’s writing and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and other publications. Her reporting on inequality, mental health, and resilience is supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. A former software engineer, Nietfeld wrote a New York Times op-ed, “After Working at Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again,” detailing harassment and retaliation at America’s best workplace. That essay went viral around the world, becoming one of the paper’s most-read essays of 2021. Nietfeld has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers Conference, Blue Mountain Center, and Hedgebrook. The winner of a Scholastic Gold Key Award and Boulevard Magazine’s Emerging Writers Award, Nietfeld has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in The Best American Essays, and taught in high schools, colleges, and MFA programs. Nietfeld holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard.