Jeffery Allen is the author of two collections of poetry, Stellar Places and Harbors and Spirits, and two works of fiction, the widely celebrated novel, Rails Under My Back, which won The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction, and the story collection Holding Pattern, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His other awards include a Whiting Writer's Award, a support grant from Creative Capital, The Chicago Public Library's Twenty-first Century Award, a Recognition for Pioneering Achievements in Fiction from the African American Literature and Culture Association, the 2003 Charles Angoff award for fiction from The Literary Review, and special citations from the Society for Midlands Authors and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. He has been a fellow at The Dorothy L. and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, a John Farrar Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a Walter E. Dakins Fellow in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. In 2015 he was named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his title Song of the Shank.
Jeffery Allen is the author of two collections of poetry, Stellar Places and Harbors and Spirits, and two works of fiction, the widely celebrated novel, Rails Under My Back, which won The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction, and the story collection Holding Pattern, which won the Ernest...