Jenny’s Stories on Selected Shorts

Jenny’s essays have been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Listen here. Jennifer Mudge reads “How to Take Dad to the Doctor” Patricia Kalember reads “Scaffolding Man” Jane Curtin reads “How to Tie-Dye” Jane Kaczmarek reads “Awake”

Downtown Women for Change: The Healthcare Gender Bias

THE HEALTHCARE GENDER BIASWith guests physician-activist Dr. Dara Kass and actress Jenny Allen. A little theatre, a lot of action! Jenny Allen will perform her acclaimed one-woman showI Got Sick and Then I Got Better:One woman’s adventures after falling down the … Continue reading →

Jenny Allen is a writer and performer. Her essays and articles have appeared for years in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, Vogue, Esquire, More, Huffington Post and Good Housekeeping. Recent essays appear in “Disquiet, Please!”a new anthology of humor pieces from the New Yorker, and in In The Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After 50 (Simon & Schuster). Read more.

I Got Sick Then I Got Better

“Embraceable…Ms. Allen speaks with passion and precision.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times
“Charming…stirring…” —Associated Press
“Excellent…completely disarming…It’s Allen’s luminous yet down-to-earth performance that will rightly linger in the minds of theatergoers.” —Theater Mania

I Got Sick Then I Got Better is a comic riff on one woman’s adventures after falling down the medical rabbit hole. Diagnosed with and treated for ovarian cancer in 2005, writer and performer Jenny Allen (The New Yorker, The New York Times) tells her story of the harrowing tailspin she took following her diagnosis, combining biting humor with searing emotion in a witty, bittersweet monologue that limns the personal and family collateral damage a life-threatening illness brings.