It is kind of you to say that way back in 2006 our conversation made you feel like a writer. It’s intense and funny and the writing is stunning. I read it in one great gulp and literally did some whooping out loud during certain stories. Victoria Redel: First of all, Kimberly, I need to start by congratulating you on your story collection. Are there any mentors who did that for you, or were you always so fearless and certain in your work? I can’t even put my finger on how you did it, but you made me feel like a writer, like I could become whatever I wanted to so long as I got out of my own way. You talked about how you had a little Post-it note on your desk that said, “You have permission.” You’d given yourself permission to be whomever you needed to be on the page, and I walked away from that interview feeling empowered and excited by the possibilities of language. But then I met you on the steps outside of Dodge Hall and you were so warm and kind and open. I was so intimidated, both because I was in awe of your work (your story collection Where the Road Bottoms Out was enormously influential to me-that Grace Paley blurb on the back cover: “Only a poet could have written this prose.” Holy shit!) and because you looked so cool and devastatingly stylish in your author photo.

Kimberly King Parsons: The first time I met you was in 2006, when I was an MFA student assigned to interview you for the Columbia Journal. – Monet Patrice Thomas, Interviews Editor It’s my pleasure to bring you the latest installment of The Mentor Series with a conversation about granting yourself permission, making time for the work of writing, and the choice that all writers who are also mothers must make. Though we now live on different coasts, it was an honor to reconnect for this interview.” Her reading list was a revelation, and her tricks and tips about process have stayed with me to this day. I had the great fortune to take classes with her during my MFA at Columbia University. Above all, she’s a teacher who inspires me endlessly, through her work and her dedication to emerging writers. Her writing is stunning, marked by brilliant rhythms and the ability to convey complex emotional relationships (particularly those between women) in crystalline prose. Of her mentor she writes: “Victoria Redel is the critically acclaimed author of five works of fiction and three collections of poetry she’s received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has contributed to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times , Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Granta, One Story, and the Harvard Review. Kimberly King Parsons is the author of two forthcoming books, a short story collection titled Black Light and a novel, The Boiling River.

Kimberly king parsons black light