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”

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

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.

From The Wall Street Journal:

I’m guessing Sophie Hannah had a moment—one that came after reading a few too many self-help books on mindfulness, compassion, connection to all living creatures and nonattachment to negative thoughts. And in that moment she said to herself, “Oh, for God’s sake.”

Read Jenny’s piece on the Five Best comic novels in the Wall Street Journal.

Read More

It must have been accumulating for months, the heap of trash in front of the house just around the bend from my place, but I didn’t notice. I knew that the owner of the little cottage, a very old man, had died, and I could see that someone was living there – a couple of pick-up trucks were parked in the driveway and lights were on in the house in the evenings. Renters? New owners? “I’m their neighbor, I should introduce myself,” I’d think when I drove by.

And then, one spring day, there it was: an incredible profusion of junk. The house sat close to the road with only a patch of front lawn, but the lawn was now buried in trash; not only that, the stuff spilled into the driveway and came right to the road. Four or five garbage cans, some upright and overflowing, some on their sides with empty cereal boxes and juice cartons spilling out. Plastic buckets strewn around, a clump of worn-out tires, many plastic milk jugs. Egg cartons, a roll of chicken wire, an upended rusty Weber grill. A beat-up plastic dog crate tossed on top of a tumble of logs.

Read the full piece in Martha’s Vineyard Magazine.