Keija Parssinen attended Princeton University, where she studied English literature and received a certificate from the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow, a Teaching and Writing fellow, and the student editor for the Iowa Short Fiction contest. After finishing the program, she won a Michener-Copernicus award for her debut novel, The Ruins of Us, which was published in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Italy and around the Middle East. The novel was long-listed for the 2012 Chautauqua Prize. In 2014, Keija was a Visiting Professor of fiction writing at Louisiana State University. Her work has appeared in the Lonely Planet travel-writing anthologies, Five Chapters, the New Delta Review, Salon, Marie Claire and elsewhere.
Keija Parssinen recommends
Beasts of a Little Land (2021)
Juhea Kim
"Elegant and wise, lush and immersive, Beasts of a Little Land is Tolstoyan in its sweep and ambition as it brings to life the Korean struggle against Japanese occupation and the making of a modern nation in the first half of the 20th century. Juhea Kim is a conjurer of rare ability whose magnificent debut utterly enchants."
Disquiet (2021)
Zülfü Livaneli
"On the surface, Disquiet is a quest narrative that follows a man searching for answers about a friend’s horrific death, but beneath that framework pulse probing questions about the mortal cost of prejudice, the chasm between East and West, the mystery of obsession, and the necessity of recognizing our shared humanity. It is a slim dagger of a book that cuts deep."
