About
Jamie Parsley
An accomplished, prolific and award-winning poet and writer, born and based in Fargo, North Dakota.
Poetry
The first of Jamie Parsley’s sixteen books of poems, Paper Doves, Falling and Other Poems, was published in 1992. Over the next thirty years he has published fifteen more books of poems, including The Loneliness of Blizzards (1995), Cloud (1997), The Wounded Table (1999), earth into earth (2000), no stars, no moon (2004), Ikon (2005), Just Once (2007), This Grass (2009), a book of poems he made with painting by the artist Gin Templeton, Fargo, 1957 (2010), which chronicled the June 20, 1957 tornado that devastated Fargo, Crow (2012), That Word (2014), Only Then (2018), Echo (2023), a book of poems he made with the artist Marjorie Schlossman, Salt (2023), and S/O/M/A/ (2025), a second book with Marjorie Schlossman.
His poems and fiction have been published in literary journals and anthologies in the United States, Britain, Canada and Japan.
Fiction, plays and music
He is the author of a book of short stories, The Downstairs Tenant and Other Stories (NDSU Press, 2014), and of several one-act and full-length plays.
In 2019, several of his poems were set to music by the composer Kyle Vanderburg in the song cycle The Notes Between the Notes.
Editing
He edited the poems of the North Dakota poet Prudence Gearey Sand (1904 to 1984), collected as Where All the Unremembered Shadows Die (North Dakota State Poetry Press, 2026).
Appointments and honors
In 2004 he was designated an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota by North Dakota Poet Laureate Larry Woiwode. In 2021 he was named Poet-in-Residence at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and began teaching there in January 2022. In 2024 he was inducted into the West Fargo High School Hall of Fame, and in 2025 he was elected the inaugural President of the North Dakota State Poetry Society.
Teaching
In addition to teaching at Concordia College, he taught Theology, Ethics, Philosophy, Literature and Writing at the University of Mary’s Fargo campus from 2003 to 2013. In 2023 he began teaching Ethics and Religion online at the University of Jamestown.
Milestones
- 2004Designated an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota by North Dakota Poet Laureate Larry Woiwode.
- 2019Several poems set to music by composer Kyle Vanderburg in the song cycle The Notes Between the Notes.
- 2021Named Poet-in-Residence at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Began teaching there in January 2022.
- 2024Inducted into the West Fargo High School Hall of Fame.
- 2025Elected the inaugural President of the North Dakota State Poetry Society.
