Black Light

'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 _____________________ A black light illuminates that which the eye doesn't see, uncovering what is hidden in plain sight. In this raw, compassionate, debut collection Kimberly King Parsons casts light onto the weird, the intimate, the eerie and the sublimely beautiful with unflinching gaze and ferocious eloquence. Over twelve crackling stories, each a glorious escape hatch, she captures the bright ache of first love, the claustrophobic shadows of desire, the obsessive nature of friendship and the rapturous pull of taboo. Filled with a frenetic longing for connection, her reckless yet resilient heroines exhilarate and charm as they pursue the promise of elsewhere. With psychedelic energy and deep humanity, Black Light chews over the messiness of being alive, the unsteadiness of hope and the ecstasies of coming of age.

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.