Jeffery Allen, the newest professor in the English Department's Creative Writing Program, talked to UVA Today about writing, teaching, and traveling.

Allen is the author of three works of fiction: the acclaimed 2014 novel Song of the Shank, nominated for the Dublin Literary Prize; the celebrated novel Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s 2000 Heartland Prize for Fiction; and a short story collection, Holding Pattern. He has also published two volumes of poetry, Stellar Places and Harbors and Spirits, plus a range of essays and reviews. A recent recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, Allen has an essay about the Black Lives Matter movement forthcoming in April in The Evergreen Review