Bundanon

Jeffery Renard Allen is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the novel Song of the Shank and the collection Fat Time and Other Stories.

His awards include the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a grant from Creative Capital, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and residencies at the Bellagio Center, Ucross, The Hermitage, VCCA, Monson Arts, 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. He was a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

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, the latter co-authored with Leon Ford. Allen is at work on several projects, including a memoir entitled Mother-Wit, a speculative novel called Radar Country, and the short story collection Try Me. He makes his home in the U.S.A. and South Africa.

In Residence at Bundanon

I will be working on a memoir called Mother Wit, a book that attempts to reframe the conversation about Black men through a lens of mental illness and mental health.