Born and raised in Chicago, Jeffery Renard Allen is a Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and an instructor in the Writing Program at The New School. Allen is the author of two collections of poetry, Stellar Places (Moyer Bell 2007) and Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell 1999), and three works of fiction, the novel Rails Under My Back (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), which won The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction, the book of stories Holding Pattern (Graywolf 2008), which won The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and the forthcoming novel Song of the Shank (Graywolf 2014), which is loosely based on the life of Blind Tom, a nineteenth century African American piano virtuoso and composer. Allen’s other awards include a fellowship at The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a grant in Innovative Literature from Creative Capital.

Moderated by Tiphanie Yanique, professor, School of Writing.

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Sponsored by the School of Writing.