John Parras

Professor • Department of Language, Lit, Culture, and Writing

Website

John Parras received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in Prose, John Parras is the author of Fire on Mount Maggiore (University of Tennessee Press, 2005), which won the Peter Taylor Prize for the novel. His creative work has appeared in Conjunctions, Salmagundi, Painted Bride Quarterly, Xconnect, Oasis and other literary journals, and his chapbook Dangerous Limbs: Prose Poems and Flash Fictions (2013) is published by Kattywompus Press. A Professor at William Paterson University, he chaired the Faculty Senate from 2011-2013. He currently coordinates the M.F.A. in Creative and Professional Writing program, directs the WPU English Department's annual Spring Writer's Conference, and serves as Editor of Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art. In 2016 he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and is a contributor to the NEA Grant "Conversations in the Visual Arts through Music and Literature" awarded to the University Galleries for 2022.

To meet with me in my Virtual Office, go to https://wpunj.zoom.us/my/john.parras during my office hours or at our mutually agreed upon appointment time.

Professional Interests

MFA Program Administration; Digital Editing and Publishing; Grant Writing

Other Interests

Some Selected Publications:

"Girl Gone Haywire: Reb Livingston's 'Bombyonder' and the State of the Novel"

"Carlo Mollino's Erotic Polaroids at Gagosian" (American Suburb X)

"This Is a Movie about Falling," short story (Empty Sink)

"emoticon," a short story (Salmagundi)

"On V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River" (Literary Encyclopedia)

"Poetic Prose and Imperialism: The Ideology of Form in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness," literary criticism (Nebula)

"On Cathy Song's Heaven" (Encyclopedia of American poetry)

Degrees

PhD English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University New York, NY

BA Creative Writing / English, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA

Specialization

Fiction and Creative Writing; 20th-Century & Contemporary Comparative Literature; Book and Magazine Publishing and Editing

Representative Publications

"Song of Magsaysay" (short story); Conjunctions; 2014
http://www.conjunctions.com/print/article/john-parras-c62

Literary Theory in the Creative Writing Workshop; 2005
https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/teachingwriting/article/view/1337/1286

Twitter Mind: On Jennifer Egan's 'Black Box'; Rain Taxi Review; 2012
https://www.raintaxi.com/twitter-mind/

"Ride" (flash fiction); CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age; 1998
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/v4/i2/g/parras.html

Representative Presentations

Reading of Creative Work
Literary Fellowship Showcase New Jersey State Council on the Arts
, 2017

Sponsored Research Panel
Explorations Conference WPUNJ
, 2017

Flashback, Flash-Forward: Jumping through Time in Fiction
WP Spring Writer's Conference
, 2015

Experimental Fiction Today
Associated Writing Programs
, 2013

Awards and Honors

College of Humanities & Social Sciences Group Project Award
William Paterson University
01/01/2015

The Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel
Knoxville Writer's Guild
01/01/2004

Fellowships, Grants and Research

National Endowment for the Arts: Grants for Arts Projects
Grant

New Jersey State Council on the Arts: Prose Writing
Fellowship

New Jersey Council for the Humanities: Writer's Conference Support
Grant

National Endowment for the Arts: Fiction Writing
Fellowship

New Jersey State Counil on the Arts: Writer's Conference Support
Grant

Notable Courses Taught

Writing Sudden Fiction
Writing Experimental Fiction
The Prose Poem
Book & Magazine Publishing
Writing for the Magazine Market
MFA Thesis Project Seminar

Undergraduate Admissions

Graduate Admissions

International Students

Administration

Faculty and Staff