Gilbert Allen

Former Furman University English Professor, Gilbert Bruce Allen, is a poet, fiction writer, editor, and educator. Born on New Year’s Day in Rockville Centre, New York, Allen and his family now live in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He and another professor at Furman University founded Ninety-Six Press. The press has produced over a dozen books, including 45/96: The Ninety-Six Sampler of South Carolina Poetry. A prolific writer, Allen has written In Everything: Poems, 1972-1979, Second Chances, Commandments at Eleven, Driving to Distraction as well as contributing over three hundred writings to magazines such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, and Pembroke. Allen has described most of his published work as an attempt to document life in America during the latter half of the twentieth century by combining the impulse to believe with the inclination to be skeptical. Allen continues to compose his own prose pieces.

Awards, Honors:
- Winner of the Nancy Dew Taylor Poetry Award from Emrys Journal (2018).
- Inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors (2014).
- Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from the Southern Review (2007).
- Five-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project Prize.