BLACK LIGHT INTERVIEWS
The Paris Review, Dark Thread: An Interview with Kimberly King Parsons. “The light on the face doesn’t change the face, it changes the perception of the face. These stories are trying to get to a true face, to that true thing that doesn’t need light to be illuminated.”
Southwest Review, Fuck-ups Are My People: An Interview with Kimberly King Parsons. “I love that reek—looking into those dark cars and seeing kids in that short, exquisitely painful phase of becoming…teenagers wading through experimentation, introspection, and low impulse control—I’m compelled by that.”
Jezebel, Writer Kimberly King Parsons on Bodies, Blood Banks, and Her New Book of Uncanny Short Stories. “If there’s godliness, it’s in the idea of loving every person or wanting to enter every person’s headspace, however fucked-up it is. Every single person is living a life as rich and vivid as your life.”
Bookforum, Bookforum Talks with Kimberly King Parsons. “Why put a plane in the sky when you could put a floater on the back of somebody’s eyeball?”
Los Angeles Review of Books, The Little Sparks: An Interview with Kimberly King Parsons. “The first sentence of a story should be primordial..it should contain the DNA of the entire piece, and I think that concept extends to collections as a whole.”
The Believer, An Interview with Kimberly King Parsons. “The first line never changes. The last line never changes.”
The Creative Independent, Writer Kimberly King Parsons On the Pleasures of Working Without a Map. “I kind of enjoy being out of control or being led around in life. There’s something I find soothing about that, going where things pull you.”
Texas Monthly, Kimberly King Parsons’ Fiction Illuminates Intimate Texas Moments. “Parsons’ favorite acts are great lyricists: the late David Berman, Bill Callahan. But because she’s sung with her share of synth-heavy bands, she also has an appreciation for the ‘wild weirdness of glitter rock.’”
Guernica, Kimberly King Parsons: Humor is an Antidote to Dread. “I respect compression above most things.”
BOMB Magazine, Valves Wide Open: Kimberly King Parsons Interviewed by Lincoln Michel. “I think some people feel genuinely comforted by seeing the pieces fall where they expect them to. That’s just not me. I like to be confused for as long as possible and then astonished.”
Epiphany, Put Them All in a Jar: A Normal, Everyday Conversation with Kimberly King Parsons. “Black Light is a rare book. Kimberly King Parsons has delivered a work of truth and beauty that will transcend generations. If that sounds too effusive, it is not.”
The Brooklyn Rail, New Routes in Fiction: Kimberly King Parsons with Alec Niedenthal. “Just because you know you’re trapped doesn’t mean you can do anything about it.”
Electric Lit, The Stories in “Black Light” Capture the Heady Obsession Between Teen Girls. “I love the feeling of being dropped into a world without having a lot of things explained to me. You can weave in details through the craft, but I don’t like deposits of information.”
Lit Hub, Lit Hub Asks: 5 Writers, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers, “Lived in Dallas, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Portland. Dicked around on the Internet for a bunch of years.”
Triangle House, Roundtable on Desire with Genevieve Hudson, Chelsea Bieker, T Kira Madden, and Kimberly King Parsons. “The best kind of desire is on the page--you can’t touch it. It’s forever unconsummated. Perfectly on fire.”
Write or Die Tribe. Kimberly King Parsons: Author of "Black Light" Talks Taking Up Space, Psychedelics, and Writing About Adolescence, “As an adolescent, I had my ego beautifully obliterated and I still—still!—feel the overwhelming affirmative effects.”
Publisher’s Weekly, Writers to Watch Fall 2019: Anticipated Debuts. “There’s a lot of game playing in these stories, whether it’s children or adults behaving badly to get to a place where they can feel that glow.”
Lone Star Literary Life, Lone Star Listens: Kimberly King Parsons Notices and Remembers, “It’s not grand, sweeping gestures that compel me in a character—it’s a tiny facial tic, a strange word choice, a private, seemingly meaningless ritual.”
Bustle, Black Light Explores Ordinary People With A Furious Desire To Escape The Everyday. “It’s a very odd thing to see your desires, obsessions, and preoccupations set out side by side in a book, but these are some of mine, for better or worse: gross motel rooms, hot girls with chipped teeth, people washing their feet, blood, gauze, glittery lip gloss, and bowling.”
The Millions, Magic in the Mundane. “If you can’t really let your guard down in your house, and in a lot of these stories, they can’t, then where can you?”
The Rumpus, Mini-Interview Project #200 with Melissa Duclos: Amplify, “Being misunderstood is a really terrible feeling.”
Propeller, How Do We Get Out of This World? “I love hotel rooms, even gross ones. It’s not real life—it’s a set, artificial. I love that the person in the room above me has the bed in the same place and the same picture on the wall.”
Advice to Writers, Kimberly King Parsons. “Go to a movie, meet a friend for a day drink, take a walk in the woods.”
Adroit Journal, Language Before Language: a Conversation with Kimberly King Parsons. “Every story has taken its turn being my least favorite, with some of them being bigger pains in the ass than others.”
Indiana Review, Interview With Kimberly King Parsons: Fiction Prize Winner. “She sees mammals in various states of decay.”