Awards

• Long-listed for National Book Award 2019
• Long-listed for The Story Prize 2020

Overview

'The stories in Black Light are grimy and weird, surprising, utterly lush...I loved every moment of this book.' - Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties With raw, poetic ferocity, the National Book Award-nominated Black Light exposes desire's darkest hollows - those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. Taking us from sultry highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories are about the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.

Full Product Details

9781838951290

Table of Contents

Reviews

The stories in Black Light are grimy and weird, surprising, utterly lush... I loved every moment of this book. * Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties * Exhilarating, enchanting, charming and irresistible... This is real-deal fiction. * Los Angeles Times * There is a reckless kind of heat to the tender, broken characters in these stories... Parsons is both unflinching and eloquent in her portrayals of people as they burn and rage. * Paris Review * Wild and compassionate... Every story in this collection is beyond remarkable, and Parsons proves herself to be a gutsy country-punk poet with a keen eye and a stubbornly unique sensibility. * NPR * Kimberly King Parsons' weird, intimate, enchanting debut does a service to the short story form... The writing sings at an undeniably pleasing pitch, with many of the sentences hitting such high notes that it feels breathtaking. * Lit Hub, ""The Best Queer Debuts of 2019"" * Just keeps getting better as you turn the pages... Wisdom and humor are so thick on the ground you could find a sentence worth quoting on every page... Comparisons have been made to Denis Johnson, Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado... and we'll add Angela Carter. The Angela Carter of Lubbock, Texas. * Kirkus Reviews * An incredibly satisfying reading experience... Perhaps the greatest strength of this collection lies in its weird, eerie, and sublimely beautiful details of setting and character. . . . Vividly rendered in a Texas setting that bursts off the page like Fourth of July fireworks. Black Light demands the attention of all the reader's senses. * Electric Literature * Wise and funny, Black Light takes your breath regularly with its elegant observations. * The Millions * These are stories bursting with feeling. Stories of heartbreak and humor, lust and friendship. It's the kind of book that will break your heart while reminding you of the lush possibilities of language. * BOMB Magazine * Black Light is an unshakable debut, a collection of stories that will grip you under its spell until its closing notes. Compulsively readable, this book is as much a love letter to language as it is to the natural world, the darkened corners of desire, and the absurdities of girlhood. Gutsy, loud, and so very Texas, this one moved me in a tectonic way. You'll underline every sentence. * Bustle * In lithe, lyrical prose à la Amy Hempel and Noy Holland, Parsons's short fiction parses the addictions and desires of Texan girls and women, and will break your heart even as it makes you laugh. * O, The Oprah Magazine * 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. * Amy Hempel, author of Sing to It *

There is a reckless kind of heat to the tender, broken characters in these stories... Parsons is both unflinching and eloquent in her portrayals of people as they burn and rage. * Paris Review * Exhilarating, enchanting, charming and irresistible. This is real-deal fiction. * Los Angeles Times * The stories in Black Light are grimy and weird, surprising, utterly lush... I loved every moment of this book. * Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties *

Author Information

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Kimberly King Parsons received her MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, New South, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Joyland, Ninth Letter, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere.

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