J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is an award-winning political columnist and journalist whose writings have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online publications in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the South, and nationally, including ColorLines, Southern Exposure, and Race, Poverty & The Environment.

Most recently. Allen-Taylor's chapter on the historic 2010 Oakland mayoral election appeared in Dr. Kitty Kelly Epstein's 2012 study of Oakland "Organizing To Change A City."

Allen-Taylor moved to South Carolina as a full-time worker in the African-American Freedom Movement late in the 1960's and lived there for the next two decades, most of his time spent in the Lowcountry area that is the setting for "Sugaree Rising" and where he says his heart lies.

The father of four children, Allen-Taylor currently lives in his native Oakland, California.

"Sugaree Rising" is his first novel.