Student Spotlight: Vanessa Le Blends Dual Passions with Medical Mystery Novels

When Forbes published its “30 under 30” for 2025, Vanessa Le could hardly believe she made the list. “My first thought was that it wasn’t real,” says Le, a student in the UC Irvine School of Medicine. The annual list highlights notable people under the age of 30 in various industries, and Le was spotlighted for media. “There was a lot of imposter syndrome involved,” she says. “But I’m immensely grateful for having been chosen.”

It’s not every day an aspiring physician is recognized as a rising star in the media world of “news and content,” but doubling as the author of two popular medical mystery novels, Le is more than deserving. She heads into her third year of medical school having published two books in two years: The Last Bloodcarver (2024) and His Mortal Demise (2025). The duology, which tells the story of a girl who can alter the biology of anyone she touches, is the result of Le finding a way to blend her two passions.

Finding Her Higher Calling

“When I was young, I knew I wanted to be either a doctor or an author,” says Le. “It’s a blessing I am able to do both in one lifetime, but writing came first.” The initial sign of her budding career as an author appeared on her first birthday.

“My family celebrates the Asian tradition of a ‘choosing ceremony’ during first birthdays,” says Le, “where they place an assortment of items around the baby so that she can choose her future.” Le chose a pen. It seemed the perfect fit as writing became a “creative catharsis” for her growing up.

In college, however, Le gave up writing to pursue her newfound interest in medicine. She attended Brown University, graduating with a concentration in health and human biology. “Medicine felt like a higher calling,” she says, though she confesses that a penchant for “zombie apocalypse movies” was another motivating factor. “In every apocalypse scenario, doctors are invaluable. There are so few job titles that endure the end of times, and MD is one of them!”

The “doctors as heroes” plotline took on a new meaning for Le during the COVID-19 global pandemic, bolstering her decision to apply to medical school. “I chose UC Irvine for my medical education largely for the location, but I’ve since fallen in love with Orange County’s weather, its Vietnamese community and their food, and most importantly, its people. I couldn’t be happier.”

Yet the pandemic didn’t just encourage Le to apply to medical school. As the world shut down around her, it also afforded her the opportunity to start writing again. “It wasn’t until the pandemic that I had time to balance both — and realized I needed both to feel truly fulfilled.”

Blending Her Two Passions

Le has since realized that writing and medicine aren’t as different as she once thought. “They’re both incredibly time-consuming and rejection-heavy processes,” she says, “but they’re also both forms of art.”

Writing offers a creative outlet for dealing with the demands of working in medicine, while Le’s medical knowledge inspires her stories. “Writing, for me, is a method of unwinding my stress and processing my experiences — something every healthcare worker needs,” she says. “The other silver lining is that I write stories that tie closely with my studies. More often, I find that both writing and medicine have benefited, rather than detracted from, my pursuit of the other.”

The timing has also worked out well for her. “The stars have aligned on my journey; I’ve been fortunate that many writing deadlines have come to me during lulls in my medical career,” she says, noting that although her debut novel came out while she was in medical school, it was completed before she actually started. The sequel was last year’s work. “I was able to upfront a lot of the work and see those payoffs now, as I’m entering the thick of my education.”

Luckily, she’ll have her writing to help her manage the stress. “While I can’t reveal much about my upcoming works, I can tell you that there’s definitely more to come from me,” she says. “Everything I write is intimately inspired by my experiences in life, which makes for very honest, yet terrifyingly vulnerable, writing.”

Learn more by following Le (@lochnessly) on Instagram.