Kimberly King Parsons

How did you become a writer?

I was an early and voracious reader, and even as a very young kid I loved telling stories. I’m also a reformed shy person—for much of my life I felt I could only have an opinion on the page. Now I say what I want, but it took me a while to get here. Originally, I thought I wanted to write literary criticism, but in 2005 I applied to an MFA program with the idea that if I got in, I would change my life and start seriously writing fiction. I did, so I did. 

 Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I was a lazy high school student without a lot of drive. I took AP classes and made decent grades, but it wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I felt a real sense of purpose. A professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Robert Nelsen, taught an intro to the short story course that set my brain on fire. He had us reading Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Babel, Amy Hempel, Barry Hannah—writers whose sentences changed everything I thought I understood about language. At the same time, I was taking a survey course on William Faulkner and Toni Morrison and another course on absurdism and another on dark documentary films and another on poetry in translation. Suddenly, school felt not only meaningful but critical. Transcendent.  

When and where do you write? 

I have a desk in an office like a nice, normal person, but mostly I write in my bed. It’s the place where I’m most comfortable, and I find that I can do very long stretches when I’m comfortable.

What are you working on now? 

I have a novel due to my editor at Knopf soon. It’s about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Sometimes I should be writing and find I can’t. For me it’s like insomnia—if I can’t sleep at night, the worst thing is to stay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, feeling terrible about not sleeping. It’s better to get up, read a book, leave the scene of anxiety. When I can’t write, I try to do the same thing. Go to a movie, meet a friend for a day drink, take a walk in the woods. Sitting and staring at the screen only prolongs the bad feeling. The sooner I decide to “waste” the day, the quicker I can usually get back to work. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

After the birth of my second child, I was exhausted and feeling like I might never write again. I was complaining about this to the brilliant writer and teacher Victoria Redel when she calmly but firmly told me, “Get back to work. Or don’t.” Something about the clear binary of that decision moved me to action. Those are the two choices—pick one! Over and over and over again I choose to write.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I don’t think I can beat Redel’s advice, but something I’d tell writers about publishing is to amass rejection. Publication is a numbers game, so if you’re shooting for 100 rejections a year, you’re bound to have some acceptances in there. And seeing each rejection as a step closer to your goal of 100 reframes the whole process. 

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the story collection Black Light, longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf. A recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR.