Bio
Brendan Allen (he/him) studies how independent videogame makers—especially those working within literary hybrid forms—navigate systems of constraint, genre, and social production. He focuses particularly on games made with constrained engines and tools such as Twine, Bitsy, and PICO-8, as well as work published on the independent videogame marketplace Itch.io.
As a poet and videogame maker himself, Brendan increasingly works in the hybrid form of game poetry. He is the developer of the videogames A Look of Glass Stops You (Game Poems #1, 2025), Capsules (2025), Correspondence (Indiepocalypse #55, 2024), The Last Best Western in Ohio (2023), and CentoQuest (2020). His poetry chapbook, The Corridors, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2023.
Brendan is a PhD student with the Faculty of Information, where he also pursues a collaborative specialization in Book History and Print Culture. He previously worked as an assistant professor of English at Trine University.
Specialization
Hybrid digital literature, new media, rhetorical genre studies, poetry and poetics, platform studies, book history, research-creation
Degrees
- BA in English, concentration in creative writing – University of Kansas (2013)
- MA in English, concentration in poetry and poetics – University of Maine (2018)
- MFA in poetry – Temple University (2021)