Allegra Kent Allegra Kent Allegra Kent (born August 11, 1937) is an American ballet dancer, actress, children's book author and columnist. Iris Margo Cohen was born to Jewish parents, Harry Herschel and Shirley (née Weissman) Cohen, and later changed her name to Allegra Kent. Kent grew up in what she later described as a dysfunctional environment. In "Once a Dancer: An Autobiography", she describes her Texan father – "who liked to substitute 'Cowboy' for Herschel" – as having "a gambler's soul and a restless nature". She describes her Wisznice-born immigrant mother as feeling "neither European nor American; she was ashamed of her
Allegra Goodman Allegra Goodman Allegra Goodman (born 1967) is an American author based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent novel, "The Chalk Artist", was published in 2017. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven. Goodman was born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in Hawaii. The daughter of Lenn and Madeleine Goodman, she was brought up as a Conservative Jew. Her mother, who died in 1996, was a professor of genetics and women's studies, then assistant vice president at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for many years, before moving on to Vanderbilt University in the 1990s. Her