About

Jeffery Renard Allen is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the celebrated novel Song of the Shank, which was a front-page review in both The New York Times Book Review and The San Francisco Chronicle. Allen’s other accolades include The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction, The Chicago Public Library’s Twenty-First Century Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a grant in Innovative Literature from Creative Capital, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, residencies at the Bellagio Center, U Cross, and Jentel Arts, and fellowships at The Center for Scholars and Writers, the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Allen is the founder and editor of Taint Taint Taint magazine and is the Africa Editor for The Evergreen Review. His latest books are the short story collection Fat Time and the memoir An Unspeakable Hope, which he co-authored with Leon Ford. A native Chicagoan making his homes Charlottesville, Virginia, and Johannesburg, South Africa, Allen is at work on his memoir Mother-Wit. Read an excerpt published in Granta.