Kimberly King Parsons is an American author and educator. She is the author of the short story collection Black Light (2019), which was longlisted for the National Book Award[1] and the Story Prize,[2] and the novel We Were the Universe (2024), which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards[3] and was ranked number two on TIME Magazine's Best Books of 2024.[4]
Parsons was born in Lubbock, Texas.[5] She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she served as editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.[5]
Career
Black Light
Parsons's debut collection, Black Light, was published by Vintage Books in August 2019.[6] In 2019, Black Light was longlisted for the National Book Award[5] and the Story Prize.[7] In NPR, Michael Schaub called it "a wild and compassionate debut collection," praising Parsons for writing "with the unpredictable power of a firecracker" and for proving herself "a gutsy country-punk poet with a keen eye and a stubbornly unique sensibility."[8] In the Los Angeles Times, Nathan Deuel wrote that the collection was "a book for the lonely, for the losers poised for more—it's a celebration of and a deeply felt meditation on the injustice, cruelty and a million private horrors endured by the weak and the unloved."[9]
We Were the Universe
Parsons's debut novel, We Were the Universe, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2024.[10] The novel was selected as a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick and ranked number two on TIME Magazine's Best Books of 2024.[11] In the New York Times Book Review, Alissa Nutting praised the novel's emotional depth and narrative structure, describing it as entertaining and singular in its approach.[12] Nutting noted that "Parsons has gifted us with a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power."[13]
In 2025, We Were the Universe won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards.[14] The novel was also a finalist for the 37th Annual Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction.[15]
In 2020, Parsons received the National Magazine Award for Fiction for her story "Foxes," which was published in The Paris Review.[28] Her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Ninth Letter, and The Kenyon Review.[5]
Teaching
Parsons teaches fiction in the MFA Writing Program at Pacific University in Oregon.[29]
"Fiction Reviews". Publishers Weekly; New York. 266 (23). June 10, 2019. ProQuest2235714111.
Deuel, Nathan (18 August 2019). "BOOK REVIEW; Living vibrantly within harsh limitations". Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif. pp.F.8. ProQuest2274597726.
Schaub, Michael (19 May 2024). "Kimberly King Parsons hits all the right notes in 'We Were the Universe'". Boston Globe; Boston, Mass. pp.N.20. ProQuest3056272236.
Ford, Madison (2024). "The Story of a Band and Its Ashes". Southwest Review; Dallas. Vol.109, no.3. pp.102–104, 104A. ProQuest3163561900.
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