Eric Gerard Parsons
Eric Gerard Parsons is a poet and writer of fiction. His poetry has appeared in Shots and Arnazella. In the mid- 1990s he founded I Am the Darker Brother, a Seattle, Washington-based poetry group. Collaborating with photographer Anne Keeney, Parsons co-created Black Voices speaking: ~ images and words of the lives of blackpeople. The exhibit was displayed at Café Septieme, a restaurant/gallery in Seattle, and in BLMF, a literary salon, also in Seattle. Parsons participated in the Seattle City Council’s Culture, Arts and Parks’ Poet Laureate Series. He was Featured Poet with the Red Sky Poetry Theater ~ the oldest continuous poetry open mike program on the West Coast, and has also been featured on Valley Voices, a radio program broadcast from Saginaw State Valley University in Michigan that gave voice to the works of poets throughout the country. Eric was a founding member of The Orange Room Collective, a group of five Seattle-based poets. In 2001 he was selected from amongst writers in the Puget Sound region to the prestigious Jack Straw Writers Program. As a Jack Straw Writer, Eric was invited to read from his then novel-in-progress, The Silence of Blackbirds, at the 2001 Bumbershoot Literary Festival, the annual Washington State Arts Festival; and, at the 2004 Richard Hugo House Black History Month Literary Series. Excerpts from The Silence of Blackbirds were subsequently published in chapbooks published by the Jack Straw Writers Program and the Bumbershoot Literary Festival. Eric was honored with four residencies from the Foundation for Artists Renaissance House on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. He is currently at work on his third novel. His second novel is inexplicably collecting dust in his bedroom.