Stephanie Andrea Allen's Blog

For a while now I’ve wanted to move my website and just recently, my preferred domain name, stephanieandreaallen.com, became available. When I started my first blog, which eventually became my website, someone else had my domain name (y’all wouldn’t believe how many folks out there share my name). It’s also time to renew my old site, so I decided it was time to go ahead and move the whole thing. I suspect there might have been a better way to do this, but it is what it is. I’m still tinkering...

Thanks so much for this interview about me and BLF Press!

The Minnesota Review

By Lauren Garretson

This is the sixth in a series of blogs written by the editorial staff of the minnesota reviewinterviewing editors and folks in publishing. We hope that these will shed some light on the industry and help you learn more about how, where, and why to submit your work.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Stephanie Andrea Allen, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of BLF Press, earlier this month....

[Short Stories, Novel, Creative Writing] M Shelly Conner uses her experiences as a dapperqueer Black woman to produce multi-genre works that examine intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Her collection of writing spans multiple media and a range of publications, including “Black from the Future: A Collection of Speculative Fiction.” As a whole, Shelly’s writing…

Lez Talk Books Radio Presents: M Shelly Conner — Black Lesbian Literary Collective

Some of y’all might know that I’m also the publisher and editor-in-chief at BLF Press. Yesterday, we revealed the cover for our upcoming anthology of Black speculative writing, and I realized that I needed to share it with you too!

I hope that the start of the new year is bringing you hope and inspiration to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Although it seems that the world is a dumpster fire right now, we can still find joy in our families, friends, and community. In 2018, I shook off even more of my fears and focused more on saying “yes” to opportunities that felt right, and “no” when it needed to be said. More than anything, I stayed busy, and if you know anything about me, that’s a good thing. 

Sometime last summer, I was asked to serve as an advisory board member of an upcoming exhibit being curated by Erica Cardwell entitled Queer Home. I was intrigued, but I needed to know more. My relationship with the word queer has always been fraught, although I do recognize its utility as a term that can serve as a catchall for the multi-valent and multi-voiced LGBTQIA community. The exhibit was inspired by the 1972 project Womanhouse, which “examined the traditional American home, removed i...

Here’s my latest post over on the BLLC! What are you reading this fall?

So, I don’t know about y’all, but all I want to do these days is curl up somewhere with a good book or two. Or three or four. If you know anything at all about me, you know that I’m almost always reading several books at a time. I’m so busy these days that I…

via Steph’s Fall Reading List — Black Lesbian Literary Collective

My short piece, “Why Did My Story Get Rejected?,” was originally published on the BLLC Review.

Rejection is hard, and let’s face it, as writers, we’ve all been there. We’ve worked tirelessly on a new story, only to be rejected from what we thought was a the perfect medium for the piece. Why? Well, no one but the editor who rejected your piece can give you the exact reason, but this week, BLF Press Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Andrea Allen shares her thoughts on why editors sometime...

I was on my way downtown when a funny thing happened. And I mean funny ridiculous, not funny haha.  I rounded a corner to merge onto the main thoroughfare in my little town, (about 20 minutes from the festival), and I noticed a police car make a sharp right turn from the left turn lane. He was right in front of me, so I was glad that I was paying attention. I looked to my right to see what the heck was going on and saw what I thought was an accident: two cars, a burgundy SUV and a red sedan p...

So, there comes a time in every writer’s life when she sits down in front of a computer screen or pulls out her pen and pad and nothing happens. Nothing. No matter how long she sits there, the words just won’t come. We generally refer to this as writer’s block and many of us have experienced it. The real question is what do you do about it? Well, there are few things that I do when I find myself in this predicament and I’d like to sh...