Alexander Parsons is a novelist and teacher who serves as director of the creative writing program at the University of Houston, where he teaches a vibrant mix of MFA and PhD candidates. He has published two novels, In the Shadows of the Sun and Leaving Disneyland, and has received various writing and teaching awards, among them a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, and a Texas Fellowship in Literature, as well as the Ross M. Lence Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities from the University of Houston. He earned advanced degrees at both the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and New Mexico State University.