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 and the Story Prize, and the novel We Were the Universe (2024), which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards and was ranked number two on TIME Magazine's Best Books of 2024.
Early life and education
Parsons was born in Lubbock, Texas. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she served as editor-in-chief of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.
Career
Black Light
Parsons's debut collection, Black Light, was published by Vintage Books in August 2019. In 2019, Black Light was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. 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." 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."
We Were the Universe
Parsons's debut novel, We Were the Universe, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2024. The novel was selected as a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick and ranked number two on TIME Magazine's Best Books of 2024. 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. Nutting noted that "Parsons has gifted us with a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power."
In 2025, We Were the Universe won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards. The novel was also a finalist for the 37th Annual Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction.
Awards Year Work Award Category Result Ref2019Black Light National Book Award for Fiction Fiction Story Prize Short Story Collection 2020 Edmund White Award Debut Fiction Oregon Book Awards Fiction Texas Institute of Letters Awards Best First Fiction 2020 "Foxes" National Magazine Award Fiction 2024–2025We Were the Universe Ken Kesey Oregon Book Award Fiction Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award Fiction Lambda Literary Award Bisexual Fiction Premio Letterario The Bridge American Fiction Writers League of Texas Book Award Fiction Joyce Carol Oates Prize Fiction
Other work and awards
In 2020, Parsons received the National Magazine Award for Fiction for her story "Foxes," which was published in The Paris Review. Her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Ninth Letter, and The Kenyon Review.
Teaching
Parsons teaches fiction in the MFA Writing Program at Pacific University in Oregon.
Personal life
Parsons lives in Portland, Oregon.
Bibliography
Collections Black Light (2019)Reviews of Black Light
Novels We Were the Universe (2024)Reviews of We Were the Universe
References
External links Official website