John W. Allen is an amateur ethnomycologist living in North America and author of ten books,including the oldest selling identification guide on entheogenic mushroom identification, and more than two dozen articles on the subject of visionary mushrooms. Allen is the editor and author of the series Ethnomycological Journals Sacred Mushroom Studies. He has photographed mushrooms in America, Hawaii, Southeast Asia, Great Britain and Europe.

Allen discovered a new entheogenic mushroom species from Thailand, named Psilocybe samuiensis Guzmán, Bandala and Allen. He has lectured at conferences and symposia, given many slide-show presentations on the history and identification of entheogenic mushrooms and mushroom art throughout the ages at universities worldwide. In 2013 the mushroom,Psilocybe allenii Borovicka, was named after John Allen. He lives in Santa Cruz, CA.