Allen, Preston L. 1964-

PERSONAL:

Born 1964; married. Ethnicity: "African American." Education: University of Florida, B.A., 1987; Florida International University, M.F.A., 1994.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Miami, FL. E-mail—pallensky@webtv.net; pallenagogy@aol.com.

CAREER:

Writer and creative writing teacher.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Sonja H. Stone Prize in Literature, State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship.

WRITINGS:

Hoochie Mama (novel), Writer's Club Press/iUniverse (Bloomington, IN), 2001.

Bounce (novel), Writer's Club Press/iUniverse (Bloomington, IN), 2003.

Churchboys & Other Sinners (short story collection), Carolina Wren Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

Come with Me, Sheba (novel), Writer's Club Press/iUniverse (Bloomington, IN), 2004.

All or Nothing (novel), Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Work represented in anthologies, including Brown Sugar: A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction, edited by Carol Taylor, Plume (New York, NY), 2001; Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2008; Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2006; and A Collection of South Florida Poets. Contributor to periodicals, including Asili: A Journal of Multicultural Heartspeak, Seattle Review, and Gulfstream magazine. Author of the blogs Preston L. Allen's Ing and Bling Book Review and All or Nothing.

SIDELIGHTS:

Preston L. Allen has produced numerous novels and short stories. His early novels, released through the self-publishing service iUniverse, found a wide audience, and his later books were accepted at publishing houses. His work has also appeared in magazines and has been extensively anthologized.

Many of his works have protagonists who, like Allen, are African American. He has said that he sees no reason to limit himself to writing about black characters. Allen noted in the blog All or Nothing, which deals with the novel of the same name, that early in his career, he received a rejection letter for a short story asking why he did not make his protagonist "regular" instead of black. He remarked that his books are now carried in both the African American and "regular" sections of bookstores, and he further wrote: "I feel the need to write stories that reflect the black community, and I do. My award-winning Churchboys & Other Sinners … for example, is a collection of stories with mostly African American protagonists. But mostly I just write the story that the muse gifts me—and the ethnicity of the protagonist will be whatever the muse says it should be."

Churchboys & Other Sinners won praise from a Black Star Review contributor for its portrayal of "day to day life in black communities," with stories featuring ordinary but sympathetic young men with realistic concerns involving work, school, family, and religion. The main character and first-person narrator of the novel All or Nothing is also, in some ways, an ordinary, average African American man, but he has one characteristic that sets him apart from most: he is a compulsive gambler.

Called simply P in the book, he is a school-bus driver in Miami with a wife and four sons. He spends many nights, as well as days when he is supposed to be working, at casinos on Indian reservations in Florida. He limits himself to a thousand dollars a day in bank withdrawals for gambling, but he is also willing to use spare change he finds on the bus, money from his family's piggy bank, and small sums he receives from his mother. He even sometimes hopes his allergy-prone son will have a severe attack, because he believes the child develops an ability to predict winning strategies when that happens.

P eventually alienates his family, loses his job, and gets barred from local casinos due to his tax problems. He disguises himself in order to continue gambling, and one big win at the slot machines in Florida convinces him to move to Las Vegas, where he has a streak of good luck like none he had ever known. He shares his newfound wealth, sending money to his family and donating to charity, and he gives up gambling for a time. Lasting happiness and a permanent cure remain elusive, however. Allen tells P's story, as some critics observed, without passing judgment, letting the facts of the character's life stand on their own.

Several reviewers thought Allen depicted the gambler's world in convincing fashion, even though some expressed slight reservations about other aspects of his work. "Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu—the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance," wrote Andrew Hultkrans in the New York Times Book Review. He deemed Allen's "spare, efficient prose" sometimes "overly casual," adding that the book therefore lacks some of the high drama of other novels of addiction. Still, he praised the work as "enlightening nonbelievers" about compulsive gambling. To John Rodonis, writing in Florida Book Review, Allen delivered "a plot and flip-flop of character perhaps a bit too serendipitous, while, to his credit, realistically portraying the desperate, manic and nerve-racking world of the compulsive gambler."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor found Allen "brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming" and summed up the book as a "fun time in the Inferno." Positive comments also came from a Publishers Weekly critic, who called All or Nothing a "dark and insightful novel" with a protagonist who is both "surprisingly likable" and "often despicable." Heather Shaw, writing in ForeWord magazine, described the novel as "funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable," while Library Journal reviewer Lisa Rohrbaugh pronounced it a "strongly recommended" work that "deserves a wide audience."