Every story in this collection is beyond remarkable.
—Michael Schuab, NPR

Parsons is an exhilarating, enchanting, charming and irresistible new voice.
—Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles Times

Parsons explores dark human emotions that fester, but also moments of humorous relief.
—The Today Show

This is a first-rate debut.
—Publishers Weekly ☆

Just keeps getting better as you turn the pages.
—Kirkus ☆

Parsons is both unflinching and eloquent in her portrayals of people as they burn and rage.
—Lauren Kane, The Paris Review

In this compassionate debut collection Kimberly King Parsons casts light onto the weird, the intimate, the eerie and the sublimely beautiful with unflinching gaze and ferocious eloquence. Over twelve crackling stories, each a glorious escape hatch, she captures the bright ache of first love, the claustrophobic shadows of desire, the obsessive nature of friendship and the rapturous pull of taboo. Filled with a frenetic longing for connection, her reckless yet resilient heroines exhilarate and charm as they pursue the promise of elsewhere.

With psychedelic energy and deep humanity, Black Light chews over the messiness of being alive, the unsteadiness of hope and the ecstasies of coming of age. Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.