Writer. Educator. Organizer
Rachel Isaacs Allen is a Punjabi-Irish writer and educator from Southern California. She lives in Brooklyn and is a 2026 MFA candidate at Brooklyn Writer’s Foundry. A 2025 and 2026 Barbara Germack Fellow, Rachel is an editor of The Foundry Review. She teaches Freshman Composition at St. Joseph’s University, Brooklyn.
A passionate literary citizen, she is a member of Kundiman Northeast, a Periplus 2024 Finalist, and she is a member of the Center for Fiction Artist Studio. She is a founding organizer of TBR: An Emerging Writer Reading Series, a reading series for emerging and independent authors.
Her writerly obsessions are regional identity and performance, and modernizing cultural mythologies. Her work can be found in Across the Margins, A curious Moon, and on her Substack: Champagne Wishes & Curry Dreams.
When she isn’t writing, she is a voracious reader, a globetrotter, and cake baker.
TBR: An Emerging Writer Reading Series
A literary event created by and for emerging writers in New York City and beyond. We provide a space for writers of all genres to share new work, experiment in public, and build creative community outside institutional walls. Our goal is simple: to make things—words, connections, moments—in community. Whether you're still figuring it out or trying something new, there's room for your voice here. Join us!