Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish Aimee Parkison’s next collection of stories, The Ambassador Owl, which is her seventh work of fiction.
Parkison, known for her inventive narratives and experimental forms, often writes of ill-fated families, relationships and lovers with a dark humor serving to make unimaginable traumas both tolerable and knowable. The 12 stories comprising The Ambassador Owl deliver on these themes at a higher level, delving into marriage and mourning, lust and loss, and violence and its aftermath. The wonders and terrors of life inside a human body – alive or dead, preserved or haunting – run across the stories.
“The collection exposes the wounded beauty of relationships, examining tender yet horrifying enigmas in the complex lives of partners, parents, strangers, and friends. Couples find their way through love, life, and lust to experience the splendor and betrayal of their bodies,” says Parkison.
Of the title story, she says, “ambassador owls are often acquired by humans after having been injured in the wild. Rehabilitated yet unsuitable for release, they become performers.” The same might be said for many of the characters across Parkison’s new stories. Despite the journeys they take through Parkison’s tales, the characters never find release from their desperation or desires.
“Short fiction sparked my original love of literature, so I am especially thrilled to publish Aimee’s collection as our first fiction title,” says Patrick Davis, publisher at Unbound Edition Press. “A bit of a wounded bird myself, these stories resonate deeply and with truth. They are darkly beautiful and compelling.”
The Ambassador Owl has a publication date of September 2022.
Aimee Parkison is widely published and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including: the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize; the Kurt Vonnegut Prize from North American Review; the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction; a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, a Writers at Work Fellowship, a Puffin Foundation Fellowship, and a William Randolph Hearst Creative Artists Fellowship. She currently teaches creative writing and literature in the MFA/Ph.D. program at Oklahoma State University. More about her work can be found at www.aimeeparkison.com
