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Host Ken Jones talks with Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection Black Light from Vintage Books.
Kim’s fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and other journals. And her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, Fanzine, Time Out New York, and The Millions. She received the 2016 Indiana Review Fiction Prize, placed second in the 2017 Joyland Open Border Fiction Prize, and was runner-up in both the 2015 Black Warrior Review Fiction Contest and the 2017 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest. Black Light is Kim’s first published book, and it was recently long listed for the 2019 National Book Award. Her novel The Boiling River, about Texas, motherhood, and LSD, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2020. Kim was born in Lubbock, Texas, the birthplace of Buddy Holly, and now lives here in Portland.
Amy Hempel said of Black Light: “The bad-ass gals in these terrific stories are all attitude, and as funny and appealing in their imperfection and thwarted desire as you’ll find in any fiction out there. Parsons opens and ends stories brilliantly. I just finished this book, and I’m going to read it again right away.”
Author photo courtesy of Heather Hawksford
- KBOO