Carl Parsons grew up in the Mid-Ohio Valley of West Virginia, where many of his stories are set. He obtained a BA and MA in English Literature from West Virginia University and completed PhD coursework at the University of Pittsburgh. He also has a MS in Manufacturing Management from Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute).
After a long career in the auto industry, which included management positions in labor relations and manufacturing operations, he retired to a second career of writing, teaching, and volunteer work. He taught writing and literature for Walters State Community College and worked as an associate editor for crime fiction with Fiction Magazines. He has also served as a Master Gardener for the University of Tennessee Extension Office in Sevier County (TN) and currently moderates the Classics Book Club of Sevier County. His publication credits include eleven short stories appearing in The Broadkill Review, The Raven Review, Scars Publications, and Spillwords Press. His poetry has appeared in Plum Tree Tavern and Literary Yard. He is a member of West Virginia Writers, Inc.
More recently, he has partnered with Wordwooze Publishing. The result has been four books:
* Trios: Death, Deceit, and Politics, 2023
* Shantyboat: American Dystopia, 2023
* Town and Country: Voices from the Mid-Ohio Valley, 2024
* Locust Hill: A Romantic Family Saga, 2025
Originally from Parkersburg, WV, Carl currently resides in Kodak, TN, just outside of Knoxville and within sight of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Carl Parsons grew up in the Mid-Ohio Valley of West Virginia, where many of his stories are set. He obtained a BA and MA in English Literature from West Virginia University and completed PhD coursework at the University of Pittsburgh. He also has a MS in Manufacturing Management from Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute).
After a long career in the auto industry, which included management positions in labor relations and...
From author Carl Parsons, winner of Penmaster Global’s best short collection of 2025 for Town and Country, comes a new collection of literary stories—Eros and Order: Love That Creates and Destroys. In this collection you’ll encounter:
· A wife who deserts her husband and young children for a life of perfect freedom, she thinks.
City girl falls in love with country boy in the family saga Locust Hill. Carl Parsons’ third noveldetails the struggles of an independent, small acreage farm family in the Mid-Ohio Valley of West Virginia. With wife Cassandra as the narrator, the novel recounts her discovery of a different world just outside her West Virginia hometown, a quaint...
In this collection of short stories the reader encounters ordinary people struggling with a variety of extraordinary problems that threaten to change their lives: an elderly widower confronting a life of regrets, precocious children threatened with separation, a middle-aged couple facing the loss of their generations-old general store, and many...
LITERARY GLOBAL BOOK REVIEW SERVICE recently named TOWN AND COUNTRY: VOICES FROM THE MID-OHIO VALLEY by Carl Parsons as one of its book award finalists for 2024 in the Literary Fiction Category. TOWN AND COUNTRY is available at this link: https://books2read.com/u/b5gDxR.
–
Literary Global
BEST POLITICAL THRILLER
2024 AWARD
FROM
LITERARY GLOBAL
Carl is currently at work on a new novel, one that blends elements of science fiction with romance and the paranormal. Using "The Covalence of Love" as a working title, he...
