Jeffery Renard Allen is Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and an instructor in the Writing Program at The New School and New York University. Allen is the author of five books, most recently the novel Song of the Shank; the novel Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune‘s Heartland Prize for Fiction, and the short story collection Holding Pattern, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. More about this author >