Nii Parkes is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project.
12 Facts About Nii Parkes
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Nii Parkes was children's poet-in-residence at the Brighton Festival in 2007.
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Nii Parkes is the co-founder and Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing, for whom he compiled fourteen two, Dance the Guns to Silence and x-24: unclassified.
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An experienced performer of his work, Nii Parkes has appeared at readings all over the world, including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York; the Royal Festival Hall, London; and Java, Paris, and often leads writing and performance workshops.
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Nii Parkes was the resident poet at Borders bookstores, where he hosted the monthly open mic at Charing Cross Road between 2001 and 2005.
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Nii Parkes ran the African Writers' Evening series at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.
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In 2012, Nii Parkes represented Ghana at Poetry Parnassus, the largest international poetry festival in the UK, held at London's Southbank Centre in conjunction with the London Olympics.
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Nii Parkes was selected as one of Africa's 39 most promising authors under the age of 40 for the World Book Capital Africa39 project in 2014.
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Nii Parkes was appointed as the founding director of the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing, launched in Accra in March 2017, under the auspices of the Kojo Yankah School of Communications Studies at the African University College of Communications.
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Nii Parkes serves on the editorial board of World Literature Today, is a trustee of the Caine Prize, and in 2019 became Producer of Literature and Talks at the Brighton Festival.
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Nii Parkes was chair of judges for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
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Nii Parkes's 2020 poetry collection, The Geez, was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Walcott Prize, and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.