Jeffery Renard Allen

Jeffery Renard Allen is an award-winning author, painter, and poet. His novel SONG OF THE SHANK was selected as a New York Times notable book and his novel RAILS UNDER MY BACK received the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland prize. Mr. Allen has received Chicago Tribune‘s Heartland Prize for Fiction; the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence; and the Chicago Public Library’s Twenty-First Century Award. He has been a John Farrar Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Walter E. Dakins Fellow in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a Gugenheim fellow. In 2023, his new collection FAT TIME was reviewed in the New York Times. He is currently working on a new story collection based on historical figures in black history.

An Interview with Jeffery Renard Allen by Kenny Meyer

January 23, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

I was introduced to Jeffery Renard Allen’s brilliant short story collection, Fat Time (Greywolf Press, 2023), by Chaya Bhuvaneswar (prize winning author of Dancing Elephants). At the time I was a participant in her short story class. She made a habit of urging me to get out of my reading rut and explore the work of writers from divergent cultural backgrounds. Chaya had plenty of good things to say about Allen’s Fat Time, so I bought a copy. I should explain that I come from the opposite end of the cultural universe from Mr. Allen and the characters he portrays….

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