Book Mecca Presents: Kendra Allen
Channel: Book Mecca
Date: 2020-11-25

Join Book Mecca for a discussion with Kendra Allen on her recent works, inspiration, life and future aspirations.
Kendra Allen is the author of essay collection When You Learn The Alphabet (University of Iowa Press). winning the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction. Born and raised in Dallas, Tx, she holds a MFA from the University of Alabama. Her debut poetry collection The Collection Plate is forthcoming from Ecco in 2021. Sometimes she tweets @KendraCanYou
When You Learn The Alphabet--
Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These dynamics strive for some semblance of accountability, and the essays within this collection are used as displays of deep unlearning and restoring—balancing trauma and humor, poetics and reality, and forgiveness