Rashaun J. Allen is an Instructor of English at Westchester Community College, who was also the first Fulbright scholar in SUNY Stony Brook’s MFA in Creative Writing & Literature program history. A Vermont Studio Center and Arts, Letters, and Numbers residency recipient whose three independently published poetry chapbooks: A Walk Through Brooklyn, In The Moment, and The Blues Cry For A Revolution became Amazon Kindle Best Sellers in African American Poetry. He was a Finalist for the 2021 Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Award and longlisted for the 2020 Dzanc Diverse Voice Prize. He has been a 2019 Tupelo Press 30/30 Project Poet, nominated for Sundress Publication’s 2018 Best of the Net Anthology in Creative Non-Fiction and was a 2017 Steinberg Essay Contest Finalist in Fourth Genre. His writing has appeared in The University of Hell Press’ 2020* The Year of the Asterisk: American Essays, TSR: The Southampton Review, Tishman Review, Rigorous, Auburn Avenue, Poui and River Styx.