Morgan Parker
Biography
Morgan Parker is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology and creative writing from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Best American Poetry. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize.
Parker's poetry collections are Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and essay collection You Get What You Pay For expand her work across fiction and nonfiction.
Parker lived in Brooklyn, where she participated in the city's poetry community and co-curated the Poets With Attitude reading series with Tommy Pico. She now lives in Los Angeles and continues to write across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
BQW Impact
Parker's writing expands contemporary representations of Black womanhood by bringing race, gender, sexuality, desire, mental health, and popular culture into the same literary conversation. Her work creates space for vulnerability, pleasure, anger, humor, and self-definition.
As a queer Black woman writer, Parker contributes to contemporary Black queer literary culture through poetry, essays, fiction, and literary community-building. Her work connects personal experience with broader questions of identity, culture, and social expectations.
Notable Works
Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night (2015)
Parker's debut poetry collection exploring intimacy, race, identity, and contemporary American life.
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (2017)
Poetry collection exploring Black womanhood, race, feminism, sexuality, desire, and popular culture.
Magical Negro (2019)
Award-winning poetry collection exploring Black American life, womanhood, history, grief, and desire.
Who Put This Song On? (2019)
Young adult novel about a Black teenage girl navigating depression, faith, identity, and adolescence.
You Get What You Pay For (2024)
Essay collection examining Black womanhood, racial consciousness, mental health, relationships, and well-being.
Learn More
Morgan Parker Official Website
Parker's official site provides her biography, bibliography, poetry, press archive, and current work.
Parker's official bibliography provides information on her poetry collections, novel, and nonfiction.
Penguin Random House's publisher page provides publication information and a description of Parker's essay collection.
Poetry Foundation's profile documents Parker's poetry, literary career, and work in contemporary poetry.