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K-State Today

October 31, 2018

Two writers to read from their creative nonfiction, poetry on Friday

Submitted by Karin Westman

Dustin Parsons and Aimee Nezhukumatathil will read from their work at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, in Wildcat Chamber in the K-State Student Union. The event is free and open to the public.

Parsons is the author of "Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams." He received his Master of Arts in English from K-State in 1999 and subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University. He has previously served as the nonfiction editor of The Mid-American Review. He teaches creative writing workshops and courses in American literature at the University of Mississippi.

Awards for Parsons' writing include an Ohio Arts Grant and a New York Fine Arts grant in creative nonfiction, the 2013 American Literary Review Prize in fiction, the 2014 fiction prize from The Laurel Review and a "notable" in the 2014 Best American Essays.

Elizabeth Dodd, university distinguished professor of English and creative writing, values Parsons' attention to landscapes within and outside the mind.

"Dustin Parsons' splendid essays in 'Exploded View' explore inner geographies: the terrain of father/son relationships, the landscape of memory, the map of self-examination. His writing is generous; the stories of these memoirs are both honest and hopeful," Dodd said.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a professor of English in the University of Mississippi's Master of Fine Arts program. Her newest collection of poems is "Oceanic." She is also the author of the forthcoming book of illustrated nature essays, "World of Wonder" (2019), and three previous poetry collections.

Nezhukumatathil is the poetry editor of Orion magazine and her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry 2015 and 2018 series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, Ploughshares and Tin House.

Her honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pushcart Prize.

"Aimee Nezhukumatathil's 'Oceanic' is one of the most popular collections of poetry in my class this fall," said Traci Brimhall, associate professor of English and creative writing.

"Students love her sense of wonder and how she braids animal facts into poems about love and family. These poems are like the aquatic creatures of the midnight zone Nezhukumatathil writes about; they make their own light," Brimhall added.

See the websites for Parsons and Nezhukumatathil for more information about their work.

The joint reading is sponsored by the English department in the College of Arts and Sciences.