David M. Parsons

Dave Parsons' Vita:

Dave Parsons, 2011 TEXAS STATE POET LAUREATE, has been recipient of many honors and awards including: a National Endowment of Humanities Dante Fellowship to the State University of New York, the French-American Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Baskerville Publisher's Poetry Prize from TCU for an outstanding poem published in their literary journal, Descant. He holds eight Writing Awards from the Lone Star College District and he was named Montgomery County Poet Laureate for 2005 - 2010. He was elected to The Texas Institute of Letters in 2009.

Parsons attended The University of Texas (Austin) and Texas State University, where he holds a BBA. After several years in business, advertising, and coaching, he received an MA in Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Houston; where, he studied with such poetry luminaries as Edward Hirsch, Robert Pinsky, Richard Howard, Stanley Plumly, and the late long-time poetry editor of The New Yorker Magazine, Howard Moss.

His poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies, including: Gulf Coast, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Review, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, descant, Standpoints: Journal for English Teachers in France, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of Poetry, New Texas Literary Review, The Langdon Review, Louisiana Literature, The Texas Review, The Weight of Addition: A Texas Anthology of Poetry, In the Eye: A Nature Anthology, Texas Review Special Poetry Edition, and Beyond Forgetting: Anthology of Poems on Alzheimer's, edited by Holly Hughes/Tess Gallagher(Kent State University Press).

Dave Parsons' first collection of poems, Editing Sky, was the winner of the 1999 Texas Review Poetry Prize and a 2000 Finalist for the Violet Crown Book Awards. His second book, Color of Mourning, was released from Texas Review Press/Texas A&M University Press in 2007. Feathering Deep (2011), rose to 15th on the Poetry Foundation Best Seller List. In 2012,his New & Selected Poems was released from TCU Press. His 6th colllection, Reaching For Longer Water (TRP/TAMU Press) is due out in 2015 and Far Out: Poems of the Sixties (Wings Press), Co-edited with Wendy Barker,will be published in 2016.

He teaches Creative Writing and Kinesiology (Racquetball/Handball) at Lone Star College-Montgomery and Poetry Workshops at Inprint Inc. in Houston.

He is founder and Co-Director of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council Writers In Performance Series and Chairman of the Conroe Commission on the Arts & Culture. Parsons has four grown children and lives with wife Nancy, an award winning Artist and Graphic Designer.

www.daveparsonspoetry.com