Kenzie Allen

poet & multimodal artist

Kenzie Allen is the author of Cloud Missives, forthcoming from Tin House on August 20, 2024. A Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist, she is an Assistant Professor of English at York University, where her research centers on documentary and visual poetics, literary cartography, and the enactment of Indigenous sovereignties through creative works. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.

Kenzie’s most recent project is a multimodal book of poetry and creative ethnography which incorporates intergenerational histories and diasporic movements, Haudenosaunee traditions, and archival materials of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School. She received her PhD in English & Creative Writing from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, her MFA in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and her BA in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. She is the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, an inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award in poetry, broadside prizes from Sundress Publications and Littoral Press, grants from Ontario Arts Council, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Writers’ Foundation, and In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poets). A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, Boston ReviewNarrative magazine, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Best New Poets, Poets.org, and other venues.