About the Author
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 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, Columbus, Ohio). 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, published 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 on Drunk Monkeys for the August 2021 issue; and one on Duane Allman in the November 2021 issue, and a third on Charlie Christian on the August 2022 issue. His creative nonfiction story “Charlie Christian Auditions for Benny Goodman, August 1939,” was on the August 8, 2022 issue of Terror House.
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 January 4, 2022.? He was runner up for the Nicholas Schaffner Prize for Music in Literature in June 2022 for his novel manuscript Joyriding Through Toonsville. His novel Boppin’ to the Blue Beat, Charlie Chrisian, the Pres of the Electric Guitar was published independently on July 20, 2022 under the penname A.R. “Adam” Abernathy. “Bo Diddley’s Shoes,” a short-story excerpt from the novel manuscript The Cakewalk Zero appeared on Terror House magazine July 6, 2022. He lives in Goyang City, South Korea, with his wife Song Seon Sook, and he retired in 2019 as an assistant professor of EFL in Seoul to write full-time.
