Brittany K. Allen

Profile Photo

Brittany K. Allen is a Brooklyn-based writer, performer and library goblin. Her prose appears or is forthcoming in Catapult, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Kenyon Review Online, and Longreads, among other places, and her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her stage plays have been produced and developed at Portland Center Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and elsewhere. 

Stories

Cover Photo: an image of Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in 'Sex and the City,' working on a laptop
Goodbye to All That Sex and the City

I couldn’t help but wonder: Of all the self-chroniclers I’d gone to like a moth in my early twenties, why were so few brown, and Black?

Aug 20, 2020
Cover Photo: Still from 'Daria'/MTV
To All the Messy Girls I’ve Loved Before

A white girl’s refusal to live by the dominant narrative gets to be glamorous, whereas I cannot imagine how a Black girl’s refusing the terms of society ever could be.

Jun 18, 2020
Cover Photo: Still from 'High Fidelity'/Hulu
How to Love a Genre That Doesn't Love You Back

I was a Black girl in the American suburbs, yet I believed The Beatles—and eventually, a dazzle of other white male musicians—were singing only for me. It wasn’t so.

Apr 16, 2020
Cover Photo: Photograph by Joshua Smelser/Flickr
In Defense of the Low Bar: An Ode to Everclear

Kurt Cobain would not approve, but privately I wondered if there wasn’t space for a beloved burnished thing in my new and improved pop pantheon.

Aug 29, 2019
Cover Photo: ‘The Way We Were’ (1973)
How to Be Heartbroken

On love, loss, and consuming heartbreak art.

Mar 20, 2018
Cover Photo: the author (far right) at rehearsal / photo by Liz Rogers
Glory in the Floorlamps: How the Theatre Became My Church

Both church and theatre demand from their followers the suspension of disbelief, and the ability to inhabit an imaginary set of circumstances in lieu of the known.

Jan 02, 2018
Cover Photo: photo by Susan Melkisethian/flickr
In Praise of the Salon: Field Notes for the Aspiring Bluestocking

I witnessed how easily art might braid to politics, how easily fellowship might inspire movement.

Jan 25, 2017