Allen M. Price was a finalist for the 2024 Kenyon Review Developmental Editing Fellowship and Witness magazine’s 2024 and Black Warrior Review’s 2023 Nonfiction Contest. He won Solstice Literary Magazine’s 2023 Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize (chosen by Grace Talusan). He also won Blue Earth Review‘s 2022 Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest and Columbia Journal’s 2021 Nonfiction Winter Contest (chosen by Pamela Sneed). A three time Pushcart Prize and two time Best American Essays nominee, his work appears or is forthcoming in Roxanne Gay’s The Audacity, The Missouri Review, Blue Mesa Review, African Voices, North American Review, The Masters Review, and many others. He has an MA from Emerson College. You can find his essay, “One Blood,” in Vol. 34.2 of december.

december Q&A

december: Tell us a bit about your work in essaydecember: where did it come from? What does it mean to you?

Allen: I had just finished reading His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, a 2022 biography written by Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. It struck me how similar my and George Floyd’s lives were; from our age, to our upbringing, to our struggle with drugs and racism, and it bothered me that I was alive and he was dead. It really had a profound impact on me. I felt the need to write this and show there was no difference between us. I just happened to be blessed to still be on earth.

december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on it? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.

Allen: I remember crying when I read George Floyd used drugs to mask the pain of racism, that he built his thin body into a muscular one to fit into white American society, and after he did, they looked at him like a scary creature when inside he was just a soft, quiet momma’s boy like me. That was the moment I knew I had to write this essay.

december: Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?

Allen: The most important part of publishing for me is getting the purpose of my work out to people. Without literary magazines, I know that would not have happened. Literary magazines are indispensable to reach new readers. The work literary journals publish is vital to our country, to our world, to continue to bring justice and happiness. We’re living in very difficult times, most the world has ever seen, and the work I’ve read in different journals brings words to life to give meaning to our lives. Sort of the same way the Dead Sea Scrolls did for many thousands of years ago. Literary magazines give people reason to think and believe in a better future.

december: What are you working on now?

Allen: I don’t write fiction but something internally has pushed me to write a dystopian historical novel about Rhode Island’s most famous slave, Newport Gardner. His African name was Occramer Marycoo. He was America’s first Black published music composer. He bought his freedom, and when he felt he couldn’t make it in America he returned to his home country of Liberia at eighty years old — only to die a short while after from a disease he contracted on the sail over. I’ve written about him in my published essays. It came to me after reading and watching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I had avoided the book because it scared me, but given where our country is today, I felt compelled.

december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?

Allen: I love nature and go for three hour walks in the woods three times a week. It’s often where my inspiration comes from.

december: Where can people find out more about you?

Instagram: @allenmprice