Morgan Parker (writer)

Morgan Parker
Born	December 19, 1987 (1987-12-19) (age 36)
Occupation	Poet, editor, novelist
Nationality	American
Education	Columbia University (BA) New York University (MFA)
Notable works	There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé

Morgan Parker (born December 19, 1987) is an American poet, novelist, and editor. She is the author of poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books, 2015),^[1] There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé (Tin House Books, 2017),^[2] and Magical Negro (Tin House Books, 2019), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also author of the young adult novel, Who Put This Song On (Delacorte Press, 2019). She has been described as a "multidisciplinary phenom" for her diverse body of work.^[3]

Parker completed her bachelor's degree in anthropology and creative writing at Columbia University^[4] and her MFA in poetry at New York University.^[5] Parker was born and raised in Southern California before attending school in New York. She moved back to Southern California in 2017.

Parker previously served as editor at Amazon Publishing's Little A and Day One. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico, is the creator and host of Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel in New York,^[6] and is a member of The Other Black Girl Collective^[7] with poet and performer Angel Nafis.^[8]

Her poetry has been featured in publications including The Awl, Poetry Foundation,^[9] Tin House, and others. Her work was also included in Why I Am Not A Painter (Argos Books), The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Black Girl Magic: The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2 and Best American Poetry 2016.

In December 2015, she was Poetry Foundation's featured blogger.^[10]

Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night was Parker's debut collection, published in 2015, was rereleased in both the UK and US in 2021. In an interview with the London Review Bookshop upon the book rerelease, Parker discusses and reflects on her art with Rachel Long.^[11] In this they also discuss the importance of spoken word and humor, where Parker's boldness gives the poems a life beyond the page, weaving between humor, pathos and collapses the distinction between the personal and political.^[11]

The rerelease opens with an introduction by Danez Smith:

Morgan Parker knows we are looking. You could say Morgan Parker considers audience; I say she peeps game. She knows on the other side of the poem is another person, their being, their ways, their looking. These pages become screens for Parker to set the conditions of that witnessing, to set a control for the wildness of lyric and living captured in this collection. (Are they Morgan. Kinda. Yes. Maybe. No. And.) find themselves dreaming up Real World audition tapes, giving Real Housewives confessions, launching urgent and prayer-filled questions at Miss Black America. They know we're watching. Morgan knows. She looks back.^[12]

Parker's nonfiction essay collection You Get What You Pay For was published on March 12, 2024.^[13] It was featured as one of Time Magazine's best new books of March 2024.^[14] Parker said in an interview with Vogue that completing the book was taxing due to the vulnerable nature of the subject matter.^[3]

• 2012 Cave Canem Fellowship^[15]
• 2013 Gatewood Prize^[16]
• 2016 Pushcart Prize^[17]
• 2017 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship^[18]
• 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry) for Magical Negro^[19]

A partial list of Parker's publications

• Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, Switchback Books, 2015
• There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, Tin House Books, 2017
• Magical Negro, Tin House Books, 2019
• Who Put This Song On?, Delacorte Press, 2019
• You Get What You Pay For, One World, 2024^[13]

Cover art for the first edition of Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night features an adaptation of work by Sam Vernon. The first U.S. edition of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé features commissioned artwork by Mickalene Thomas. The second edition features the photo Portrait of a Woman Fallen from Grace, 1987 by Carrie Mae Weems.^[20]

Parker also writes essays and articles in between publishing her books and poetry.^[21]

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• Official website