Rails Under My Back

About the Author

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN is a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia. He taught for many years in the writing program at the New School as well as at Columbia University and New York University. Allen is the author of five books, including the novel Song of the Shank, which is loosely based on the life of Blind Tom, a nineteenth century piano virtuoso and composer who was the first African American to perform at the White House. It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Rails Under My Back won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction, and Allen’s short story collection, Holding Pattern, received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He is also the author of two collections of poetry. Allen is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a grant in Innovative Literature from the Creative Capital Foundation, and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Born in Chicago, Allen holds a PhD in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the founder and director of the Pan African Literary Forum, and is the fiction director of the Norman Mailer Center Writers Colony.

www.jefferyrenardallen.com