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A collection of Jenny's humor pieces and essays published by Sarah Crichton Books at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. -
Author Archives: admin
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”
“The Thing with Feathers” — McSweeney’s
Hope is the thing with feathers. Remember that! Visualize that! Especially during these harrowing times! Thank you, Emily Dickinson!
See how the little thing, delicate but mighty, takes wing and soars, singing its dulcet song, leaving all human misery down below.
Hope! Feathers! Got it! Sear this thought into your brain while you root around under the sofa cushions for… (Read the full piece at McSweeney’s.)
“The Thing with Feathers” by Jenny Allen
in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
December 10, 2020
“House Beautiful” in the Southampton Review
“House Beautiful”
in The Southampton Review
August 2020
Welcome to La Enchantada, my summer home here on the rhapsodically beautiful island of Martha’s Vineyard. I trust you enjoyed your gondola ride across La Enchantada’s moat.
Before we step inside, you will note that La Enchantada is a classic Palladian villa in design—a la Palladio’s majestic Renaissance villas in Vicenza—only not dinky. It is 82,000 square feet, excluding the cricket stadium and hydroponic forest in the basement. Local land-use crackpots are trying… (Read the full piece in the Southampton Review.)
“These Things I Pray” in the Vineyard Gazette
“These Things I Pray”
Vineyard Gazette — Commentary
Dear God, please let today be a good day, that is, a day in which I do not do anything too stupid. Let it be a day unlike yesterday, when I thoughtlessly handled a banana with my bare hands without scrubbing the skin first, even though I left the banana outside for two days before I did that. I am too afraid to Google how many days the virus stays alive on banana skins, but it’s too late now anyway, isn’t it?
I think the banana peel also may have come in contact with the stainless steel around the kitchen sink, which I think is where I stood while I… (Read the full piece in the Vineyard Gazette.)
Downtown Women for Change: The Healthcare Gender Bias
THE HEALTHCARE GENDER BIAS
With 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 show
I Got Sick and Then I Got Better:
One woman’s adventures after falling down the medical rabbit hole. Writer and performer Jenny Allen tells her story of the harrowing tailspin she took following her ovarian cancer diagnosis, combining biting humor with searing emotion in a witty, bittersweet monologue that illuminates the personal and family collateral damage a life-threatening illness brings. Dr. Dara Kass will speak to these issues and more:The lack of research specifically for women.The collateral damage of politicizing abortion against all women’s healthcare.Maternal mortality, which disproportionally affects low-income women and women of color.The differential treatment of women’s pain vs men’s, which delays diagnoses like cancer.
Thursday, March 12th 7pm
46 Barrow Street
Jenny Allen’s “Awake,” Read by Jane Kaczmarek
From PRI’s Selected Shorts: Guest host Andy Borowitz intros four hilarious pieces featured in his anthology The 50 Funniest American Writers. James Naughton reads S.J. Perelman’s noir parody “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer;” Susan Orlean complains about idle tots in “Shiftless Little Loafers,” read by Dave Hill; old-time radio is revealed in Jean Shepherd’s “The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message,” read by Isaiah Sheffer; and one woman’s all-nighter, in Jenny Allen’s “Awake,” read by Jane Kaczmarek. Learn more about your ad choices.
Imagining Madoff moves to Theater Row
“…Jenny Allen adds a rich third dimension as Madoff’s secretary, who struggles to presume her own innocence in her testimony at his trial.”
—Rollo Romig, The New Yorker
(read the full review)
Jenny will reprise her role in Imagining Madoff at the Lion Theater this fall. Tickets are available here.
Imagining Madoff finds Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff in prison, determined to control his own narrative for history as he dictates to a visiting biographer stories about his childhood, his family, women, money and an all-night meeting he had with Holocaust survivor and poet, Solomon Galkin.
During an interview in prison, Bernie Madoff recalls the events of an evening long ago when he met Holocaust survivor and award-winning Solomon Galkin, who tries to convince Madoff to take him on as a client. Their conversation, driven by bourbon and talk of philosophy and religion, spins off into the early hours of the morning, interspersed with Madoff’s former secretary, another unknowing victim at the hands of Madoff.
“So engrossing and philosophically lively…the cast is exquisite.” – Rollo Romig, The New Yorker
“An outstanding piece of theater…an excellent and intriguing play…superb acting talents.” – Marina Kennedy, Broadway World
4 stars from New York Stage Review
Jenny performs in THE TRUMPIAD at Boston Theater Marathon
Jenny performed in Boston Theater Marathon’s “The Trumpiad,” by Robert Brustein. Jeremiah Kissel also acted in the piece, and will re-join Jenny in Imagining Madoff this fall.
Reading from Would Everybody Please Stop? at 2019 Symphony Space Gala
Julia Murney read a selection from Jenny’s book Would Everybody Please Stop? at the 2019 Symphony Space Gala.
Jenny in reading of Terence McNally’s Mothers and Sons at Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse
Jenny acted in a reading of Terence McNally’s Mothers and Sons at Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse.
