This story was the runner-up in the MAYDAY 2024 Nonfiction Contest. Life, Death, Neighbors, Houses I’m sitting at my kitchen table talking to my friend Anne on Zoom when a cop car pulls up to the curb in front of my house. “The cops are here,” I say. “I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.” […]
Mary Allen
MARY ALLEN is the author of a literary memoir, The Rooms of Heaven, published by Alfred A. Knopf and Vintage Books, and a collection of personal essays, The Deep Limitless Air: A Memoir in Pieces, published by Blue Light Press. She has received an NEA grant, has a regular blog on the Psychology Today website, and has published short work in Poets & Writers, Real Simple, Library Journal, CNN On-line, Shenandoah, Tiferet Journal, The Chaos, Beloit Fiction Review, and two anthologies, If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings and The Love Book. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches in the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival. She lives in Iowa City and is a full-time writing coach.
