About Jamie

Jamie Allen is a writer based in Los Angeles. His first novel, The Dashing Diner, was published in November 2024. Earlier in the year, his script Double D was a semifinalist in 2024 Austin Film Festival screenwriting contest.

Jamie is the creator and writer behind the Squirrel Census, a design, science, conceptual art, and storytelling project. Started in Atlanta in 2012, the five-person Squirrel Census team led the first-ever complete count of Eastern gray squirrels in New York City’s Central Park in 2018. The results were published in the Central Park Squirrel Census 2019 Report, and the Census was featured in The New York Times, 99% Invisible, NPR, and many other outlets. The Census has also released squirrel data, stories, jokes, songs, and other tidbits of entertainment through a 1-800 number (833-NYC-SQRL).

Jamie has published longform journalism, essays, short stories, poems, and humor in outlets including McSweeney's, The Paris Review’s “The Daily,” The Oxford American, The Missouri Review, Grantland, Garden & Gun, Atlanta Magazine, New South, and many others.