This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Kimberly King Parsons, whose debut novel is We Were the Universe (out now in hardcover from Knopf and available in paperback from Vintage Books this June, 2025).
About the book:
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?
Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.
About Kim:
Kimberly King Parsons is the author of Black Light, a collection of stories that was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. In 2020, she received the National Magazine Award for fiction. Born in Lubbock, Texas, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner and children. We Were the Universe is her first novel.
Kimberly King Parsons recommends:
Nightwork by Christine Schutt (Dalkey Archive Press): This is a short story collection that I return to over and over for its dark beauty, its brutal, unsettling sexuality, and its tremendous sentences. I look to Schutt when I need to be emboldened.
Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker (Little, Brown & Company): This book is a brilliant display of literary suspense—Bieker is attuned to women’s voices like no other writer I know.
Woman of Interest by Tracy O’Neill (HarperCollins): Cool and cerebral and tender all at once—a stunning memoir with the propulsion and intrigue of a top-shelf mystery.
Lauren Korn recommends:
We Were the Universe (Alfred A. Knopf) and Black Light: Stories (Vintage Books) by Kimberly King Parsons
Woman of Interest by Tracy O’Neill (HarperCollins)
All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead Books)
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (William Morrow; HarperCollins)
Beautyland by Marie Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Good Girl by Aria Aber (Hogarth Press; Penguin Random House)
—
The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Montana Book Co., located in downtown Helena, Montana, since 1978, offering new books for all ages, vinyl records, and community activism. For delivery in Helena and shipping online, visit mtbookco.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
