Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. She is a first-generation descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Allen holds a BA in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, an MFA in poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Allen is the author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the CLMP Firecracker Awards, the Indigenous Voices Awards, and the Maya Angelou Book Award, and was long-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems can be also found in Narrative Magazine, Poetry magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus. Her work extends into concrete poetry, digital media, and site-specific arts.

Allen is the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, the inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, grants from Ontario Arts Council, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Words, and Indigenous Nations Poets. 

Allen is an associate professor of English at York University in Toronto, where she teaches creative writing and Indigenous literatures.