He was a longtime member of the Dark Room Collective, an organization that from 1988 to 1998 celebrated and gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color, and also is a Graduate Fellow of Cave Canem.

[8] In its review Publishers Weekly described the book as "suspenseful, thought provoking, mystical, and haunting....Keene's confident writing doesn't aim for easy description or evaluation; it approaches (and defies) literature on its own terms.

"[14] In March 2017 Fitzcarraldo was awarded the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses for Counternarratives, a unanimous decision by all six judges, who described Keene's collection as "a once in a generation achievement for short form fiction.

Its subject matter, formal inventiveness, multitude of voices, and seriousness of purpose transform a series of thematically linked stories into a complete work of art.

In 2014, Letters from a Seducer, his translation of Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst's 1991 novel Cartas de um sedutor, was published by Nightboat Books and A Bolha Editora.

[18] He has published translations from French, Portuguese and Spanish, of work by writers including Alain Mabanckou,[19] Mateo Morrison, Edimilson de Almeida Pereira, Claudia Roquette-Pinto, and Jean Wyllys, among others.

[20] Keene also has engaged in public and durational conceptual events such as the "Emotional Outreach Project", under the rubric of the Field Research Study Group A, beginning in 2002.