Kenneth Parsons

Kenneth Parsons was born in Ashland, Kentucky. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Kentucky, a Master’s in Journalism from Marshall University, and a MATESL degree from the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign’s Division of English as an International Language program. Since 1990, he has taught English, ESL, and EFL in the U.S., China, Japan, and South Korea. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines including Wind, Silk Road, White Pelican, and Shi Kan (China’s official monthly poetry magazine). He is the author of a chapbook titled Window, Shadow, Mirror (Pudding House Press, 2007). His novel Our Mad Brother Villon was released by Little Feather Books (New York City) in 2015. A short story, "Sharks," appeared in the anthology The Boom Project: Voices of a Generation, featuring select writers of the Ohio River Valley from Pittsburg to Cairo, Illinois, by Butler Books (Louisville, KY) in 2019. He is also an amateur guitarist with an avid passion for progressive rock and jazz music. An article on Jeff Beck appeared in Drunk Monkeys for the August 2021 issue and one on Duane Allman in the November 2021 issue. His story "Diary of a Vagabond: September 1, 1923 and its Aftermath" about Japanese writer Hayashi Fumiko and the Great Kanto Earthquake appeared online on Terror House Magazine on January 4, 2022.  In June, he was selected as runner-up for the Nicholas Schaffner Prize for Music in Literature for his novel manuscript Joyriding Through Toonsville. He lives in Goyang City, South Korea, with his wife Song Seon Sook and retired in 2019 as a professor of EFL in Seoul.