Cynthia
Allen
writer & editor
About Me
Writer, editor, teacher, PR consultant, bartender, volunteer, mental health counselor, wife, mother, and now grandma. These are the outer garments I’ve worn -- some discarded, others newly embraced -- in a lifetime marked by joy and heartache, travel and stillness.
​
Always writing. Trying to make sense of it all.
​
​
Favorite Quote
​
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in an utterly unknown language.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet
Experience
I began my career producing and syndicating a monthly radio show of interviews with writers and editors from Ms. Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Redbook and others. I followed the writer’s path into a number of advertising and public relations agencies in NY and NJ before beginning my own PR consulting business.
​
I earned master’s degrees in creative writing and clinical psychology and taught college writing courses for over 15 years.
​
In 2024, I launched IN A FLASH, a new literary magazine on Substack, with my co-founders and co-editors Leanne Sowul, Casey Mulligan Walsh, Nina Lichtenstein, and Kate Lewis.
My Bedside Reading ~ Past & Present
~ Perhaps you might find some inspiration ~
Rilke’s Book of Hours, Love Poems to God ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
You are the Future, Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke
~ Mark S. Burrows and Stephanie Dowrick
Centering Prayer for Everyone ~ Lindsay Boyer
Memories, Dreams, Reflections ~ C.G. Jung
Don’t Call Me Mother ~ Linda Joy Myers
What the Living Do ~ Marie Howe
The Leaving Season ~ Kelly McMasters
Between the Bells, Stories of Reconciliation from Corrymeela
~ Paul Hutchinson
The Power of Myth ~ Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers
The Healing Path, A Memoir and an Invitation ~ James Finley
Light When It Comes ~ Chris Anderson