Critics have hailed Aimee Parkison as a new distinct voice in contemporary fiction. Characterized by her sense of imagination and creativity,
Parkison's writing slowly peels away layers of social
interaction to consider the magical, frightening and essential elements of
life.
Parkison learns from her own characters as her stories progress,
attributing her decision to become a fiction writer to a desire to gain control
over elements of life. Her recent story collection, The Innocent Party, was published by BOA Editions, Ltd.; (April 17, 2012).
Parkison is a fiction writer and a poet. As an associate professor of
English, she teaches creative writing and is the coordinator of the creative
writing program at UNC Charlotte. She currently is working on a new story
collection, a screenplay, and a historical novel. Her primary areas of interest
include fiction writing, creative nonfiction, screenwriting and film studies and
women’s studies.
Parkison is also the author of Woman with the Dark Horses (2004, winner of the first annual Starcherone Prize), as well as various fiction works and poetry published in literary magazines, anthologies,
and academic journals.
Parkison regularly holds fiction readings and writing workshops at colleges
throughout the country. She also will participate in the Association of Writers
& Writing Programs Conference 2014 in Seattle. As part of the Women Writing
Violence panel, she will discuss how today’s literature often ignores the trend
of “Women Writing Violence.”
Parkison received a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, a Writers at Work
Fellowship, and a Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize from the North American Review.
Her first book, Women with Dark Horses, won the first annual Starcherone Fiction
Prize.
Parkison recently has received a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in
Prose Writing and a Hearst Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society for
her current work-in-progress, a historical literary novel titled The Dumb
Supper. The novel is set in Concord, MA in the 19th century, exploring the
hidden sexual implications in parlor games and holiday courtship rituals of
Victorian Americans.
Parkison has a new book under contract for 2014, a short poetic novel called The
Petals of Your Eyes, about kidnapped girls who become actors in a secret
theater. Parkison’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has
appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, So to Speak, Nimrod, The Literary Review,
Feminist Studies, Mississippi Review, North American Review, Quarterly West,
Cimarron Review, Santa Monica Review, Other Voices, Crab Orchard Review, Fiction
International, Seattle Review, and Denver Quarterly.
