R.E. Hengsterman

R.E. Hengsterman is a registered nurse, Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, award-winning author, and educator with more than thirty years of healthcare experience. Writing at the intersection of the clinical and the imaginative, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in more than fifty publications, including Across the Margin, Maudlin House, Bluntly Magazine, Eunoia Review, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Barren Magazine, Riggwelter, Phenomenal Literature, Former Cactus, The Airgonaut, and The Blotter Magazine.

His work explores the space where storytelling and science meet. He brings empathy to facts, narrative to data, and a writer’s eye to the human experiences often hidden beneath healthcare statistics, policies, and systems.

His award-winning book, The Shift Worker’s Paradox, is a work of narrative nonfiction that blends science, personal experience, and practical guidance to examine the physical, psychological, and social costs of living against the clock. His newest book, The Deadly Wait, turns its attention to the pressures facing modern healthcare, examining what happens when patients, nurses, and healthcare systems are forced to operate within environments strained by delays, staffing challenges, competing demands, and limited resources.

Known for bridging healthcare and storytelling, his work uses narrative to make complex clinical issues more accessible while encouraging greater empathy, reflection, and understanding. Through Nurse Who Writes, he continues that work by exploring healthcare through both scientific evidence and lived experience, with an emphasis on improving patient care, strengthening professional reflection, and giving healthcare workers a language for experiences that can otherwise be difficult to articulate.

He holds master’s degrees in nursing education (MSN), Innovation, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship (M.E.), and the arts (MA). Influenced by writers including Denis Johnson, Mohsin Hamid, and Alice Walker, his fiction aims for the heart, while his nonfiction seeks clarity within complicated systems.

He lives in North Carolina, where he divides his time among research, storytelling, healthcare leadership, and working the night shift.