JEFFERY RENARD
ALLEN
Jeffery Renard Allen is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. Born in Chicago in 1962, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also earned his PhD.
He is the author of two poetry collections, Stellar Places (Moyer Bell, 2007) and Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell, 1999), as well as the short-story collection Holding Pattern (Graywolf Press, 2008). His novel Rails Under My Back (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) received the Heartland Prize for Fiction from the Chicago Tribune.
He has also received a Whiting Award and the Charles Angoff Award for Fiction from Literary Review. His essays, reviews, short stories, and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Previously, he taught English at Queens College of the City University of New York and served on the faculty of Columbia University’s writing program. He has also taught at a variety of universities and literary centers around the world.
Allen is Director of the Fiction Program at the Norman Mailer Center and co-founder and president of the Pan-African Literary Forum, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting writers from across the African continent.