Alexander Parsons Introduction

Yesterday, Alexander Parsons, author of Leaving Disneyland, and In the Shadows of the Sun, who is a candidate for a faculty position in creative writing in fiction at the Creative Writing Program at the university I work at, gave a campus talk and Q & A and luckily for me it was during my lunch break.

I've always wanted to be a fiction writer ever since I picked up Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and later reading Camus, but I started to write poetry instead and I found myself immersed in the poetic line. Parsons, however, reminded me of the art of prose. He read several passages from Hemingway, Carver, and various contemporary authors as well. Some of the sentences he read blew me away and when he read passages from his own novels I was even more astounded. There were mostly fiction students and professors there and then there was me, in a pink shirt, black tie and umbrella--listening, devouring this knowledge and sort of discussion I sometimes feel I have been missing out on. I don't know whether or not he'll be hired but if he were I'd definitely take his course.