Jeff Parker

Education

1996 University of Florida, B.S.

1999 Syracuse University, MFA

Career Specialties

Jeff Parker teaches how to lie and how to tell the truth. These techniques come in handy in writing fiction and nonfiction. He also teaches contemporary literature from the US and around the world.

Professional and Community Activities:

Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman (Tin House) and the story collection The Taste of Penny (Dzanc). He is the co-editor of the anthologies Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House) and Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, n+1, Ploughshares, Tin House, and other pubs. His nonfiction book Igor in Crisis: A Russian Journal is forthcoming from HarperCollins. He co-founded DISQUIET: The Dzanc Books International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2011, and for many years he was the program director of the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. He spent 2010-2011 in Moscow, Russia, on a Fulbright Research Fellowship teaching creative writing, a subject that does not exist there, at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Previously he taught at the University of Toronto and Eastern Michigan University.

Honors and Awards

Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, Moscow, Russia, 2010-11

Canada Council for the Arts, Grant for Professional Writers, 2010

Ontario Arts Council, Writers Reserve Grant, 2009 (Coach House Books)

2008 Powell's Books / Morning News Tournament of Books Finalist for Ovenman

Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference, University of the South, 2007

Selection, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, "False Cognate", 2006

Finalist, New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM 2006 chapbook contest for The Back of the Line with artist William Powhida

Finalist, Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize, Del Sol Press, 2005 for "The Taste of Penny"

Selection, Ploughshares Emerging Writers Issue, "The Taste of Penny", 2003

National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Seminar Fellowship

Creative Writing Fellowship, Syracuse University English Department, 1996-97