Alan Michael Parker is the author of two novels, including the forthcoming Whale Man (WordFarm, 2011) and Cry Uncle, along with 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). He is also Editor of The Imaginary Poets, and co-editor of two other volumes of scholarship. 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 has appeared in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Alan Michael Parker is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. As an undergraduate, Alan Michael Parker was invited to join the graduate poetry workshop at Washington University, where he studied with Donald Finkel, Howard Nemerov, and Mona Van Duyn. As a graduate student in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, whence he received his. M.F.A. in Writing, Alan Michael Parker studied with Carolyn Forche, Richard Howard, Denis Johnson, Stanley Kunitz, William Matthews, and Nobel Laureates Joseph Brodsky and Czeslaw Milosz.
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. He lives in Davidson, NC, with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.
News:
"Fifteen Ways to Think About Italian Opera," has been awarded First Prize in the Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition for "Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Everything in Between," judged by David Shumate. The award comes with publication and a $1000 prize.
Three excerpts from AMP's novel in progress, The Committee on Town Happiness, have been published in the January issue of the new on-line magazine, The Collagist, along with a podcast. Here's the link.
"The Rhinoceros in the Hall," an essay by AMP on the Pompidou Centre, live art, and democracy, has just been published in The Believer. Here's a link to the teaser.
Two new poems by AMP are on-line, at Connotation Press. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "To the Peasant, Avram," was featured on Poetry Daily on September 5, 2009. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "A Christmas Letter," was featured on Poetry Daily on May 27, 2009. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "Peaches or Plums," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 16, 2009. Listen here.
AMP's poem, "My Son, Under the Waterfall," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 11, 2009. Listen 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."
Look for new poems and works of flash fiction by AMP in American Literary Review, Black Clock, The Collagist, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Connotation Press, The Kenyon Review, The Laurel Review, Opium, Southeast Review, Sub-Tropics and Tikkun.
