Alan Michael Parker is the author of five collections of poems, Days Like Prose, The Vandals, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, A Peal of Sonnets, and most recently, Elephants & Butterflies (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008), as well as a novel, Cry Uncle. He is also Editor of The Imaginary Poets, and co-editor of two other volumes. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines; his prose appears regularly in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, he holds degrees from Washington University and Columbia University. Since 1998, Alan Michael Parker has taught at Davidson College, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program.
Alan Michael Parker lives in Davidson, NC, with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.
News:
Alan Michael Parker's poem, "A Christmas Letter," was featured on Poetry Daily on May 27, 2009. Here's the link.
Alan Michael Parker's poem, "Peaches or Plums," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 16, 2009. Listen here.
Alan Michael Parker's poem, "My Son, Under the Waterfall," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 11, 2009. Listen here.
Elephants & Butterflies has been named a Favorite Book of 2008 by critic Carmine Starnino on the Poetry Foundation's blog, Harriet. Read the citation here.
Writing in the Mid-American Review, John Freeman says of Elephants & Butterflies: "I would guess that Parker's brand of ironic inquiry will keep the critics busy for quite a while. Not since Wallace Stevens has America produced a poet as complex and varied as he is accessible. This collection is a must for any serious reader of American poetry."
Two works of flash fiction by Alan Michael Parker, "Report from the Committee on Town Happiness" and "Our New System of Government," have received Editors' Choice awards in the Mid-American Review's 2008 Fineline Competition.
"Down Winding, Cobbled Streets to the Sea" was a finalist for the 2008 Erskine J. Poetry Prize from A Smartish Pace.
Look for thirty-one new poems and works of flash fiction by Alan Michael Parker in American Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Northwest Review, Opium, POOL, Salt Hill, A Smartish Pace, Southeast Review, Tikkun, and Western Humanities Review.
