Roberta Allen is an author, artist, and teacher. She is the author of two story collections, Certain People , and The Traveling Women, both praised by The New York Times Book Review; a novella-in-stories,The Daughter. praised by the Voice Literary Supplement; a novel, The Dreaming Girl, praised by the Village Voice; and the travel memoir, Amazon Dream , praised by The L.A. Reader, and a selection of The Quality Paperback Book Club.

Roberta has helped thousands of people through her writing guide, Fast Fiction, and through her latest guides, The Playful Way To Serious Writing, and The Playful Way To Knowing Yourself, the latter two published by Houghton Mifflin with Roberta's photographs and drawings. She is on the faculty of New School University, has taught in the writing program at Columbia University, and in private workshops since 1991.

She is also a visual artist who has exhibited worldwide, with work in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

More than one hundred-and-fifty of Roberta Allen's stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Open City, Bomb, Chelsea, Epoch, The Saint Ann's Review, The Brooklyn Rail; and in numerous anthologies, including MICRO FICTION (WW Norton); 110 STORIES: New York Writes After September 11th, (New York University Press); and UP IS UP BUT SO IS DOWN: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, (New York University Press). Some stories have been translated into German and Japanese. Her articles have appeared in such magazines as The Sophisticated Traveler, the travel magazine of The New York Times. In 1998, Roberta Allen was a Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction.

Her reputation as a writer and teacher continues to grow. She has been a guest teacher, reader, and lecturer at libraries, writing conferences and universities, including Murdoch University, Perth, Australia; University of Western Australia, Perth; Curtin University, Perth; Kutztown University; State University of New York, Plattsburgh; Hofstra University's Summer Writing Conference; C. W. Post College; Binghamton University, SUNY; and Fordham University. She has appeared on radio (NPR) and tv (PBS) programs.

She offers one-to-one private coaching to both writers of fiction and nonfiction throughout the United States and other countries. She welcomes writers at all levels, from beginners to published writers. If you are interested in consulting with her, please send an email from this site.

A self-taught artist and writer, Roberta Allen left home on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where she was born and raised, to live and work in Europe when she was nineteen. In 1967, her first solo exhibition of paintings took place at Galerie 845 in Amsterdam. After exhibiting in galleries and museums for over a decade in New York and Europe, she began writing. In 1980, her first short short stories were published in the anthology, CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION, Sun & Moon Press, with such notable authors as John Ashbury, Russell Banks, and Walter Abish. Since then, she has continued writing, making art, and traveling.

She has traveled alone for decades to such places as the Peruvian Amazon, Indonesia, Belize, Nicaraqua, Costa Rica, and, most recently, Panama. A fellowship in 1989 from the State Museum in Perth took her to Australia for several months. A trip to Mali in 1995 was commissioned by The New York Times. Her travels have inspired several of her books.

She divides her time between Woodstock, New York, and Manhattan.