Body of Evidence crosses boundaries between story and confession in a haunting speculative collection that confronts the aftermath of gendered violence by blurring the divide between fiction and nonfiction.
Speculative fragments and nonlinear prose explore what remains unspoken in trauma's generational echoes. Avoiding graphic representations, Aimee Parkison examines how violence reverberates through communities and individual consciousness.
Structured as exhibits in a case file, this hybrid mosaic challenges traditional storytelling to make invisible wounds visible. Each piece functions as both artistic exploration and cultural investigation, questioning how silence operates in survival. Through the constraint of compression, Body of Evidence demonstrates how micro narratives can serve as witness and testimony.
Aimee Parkison is a writer of experimental prose known for her revisionist narratives about women. She is widely published and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the FC2 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 in the MFA/PhD program at Oklahoma State University, where she has been awarded a Regents Distinguished Research Award and has been named a DaVinci Creativity in Education Fellow.
"Aimee Parkison, whose stories have garnered both critical praise and prestigious awards, maintains a voyeur's densely layered dynamic with the world. It is easy to get seduced as much by the sonic texture of her accomplished prose as by its startling cinematic imagery." — Review of Contemporary Fiction, previous praise
"As a writer, Aimee Parkison is what my younger female colleagues admiringly call a badass bitch. Daring and unforgettable." — TANK Magazine, previous praise
"Dangerous to the bone." — Lance Olsen, previous praise
"One of the most innovative fiction writers working today." — Gina Frangello, previous praise
"A triumph of the imaginal in the face of a culture that would see us silenced, dead, and gone." — Lidia Yuknavitch, previous praise
"These are stories both about the difficulty and the intense suddenness of human connection, about the profound link that exists between being in love and being alone." — Brian Evenson, previous praise
"Aimee Parkison is a shrewd, fiery, wildly poetic, politically astute writer of fiction." — Jane McCafferty, previous praise
"Parkison's prose flows with a subtle, musical rhythm that only prose can achieve, and then rarely... Every sentence, every sentence, is exquisite." — Hayden's Ferry Review, previous praise
"These sometimes violent, sometimes visionary stories haunt the reader for days, and make the ordinary world look stranger." — Alison Lurie, previous praise
"Parkison treats violence, voyeurism, innocence, and guilt with imagery sharpened to its finest edge." — Publishers Weekly, previous praise
