Ted Parkhurst

I was born in Marion, Michigan in 1947, delivered to a farm residence on a sleigh. My father was a welder-turned-dentist (exchanged one form of metalurgy for another)and my mother opened Flemming's Clothing in Marion in 1949. I was an active Boy Scout (Eagle Scout, Order of the Arrow) and graduated from Marion High School in 1966. Attending Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas during the late 1960s, I was active in Young Americans for Freedom (state chair, national board member). My first solo book of poems was self-published while I was a student there. In 1969, I transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where I graduated the following year. My Selective Service lottery number was 1 when I graduated in 1970, so I joined the USMC reserves with a recommendation from former governor Sid McMath. I was married shortly after graduation and my daughter Dawn was born the following year. Dawn's congenital heart defect, and my resulting need to remain in a group insurance plan, kept me employed at C. Finkbeiner, Inc., a large meat packing firm in Little Rock for the next nine years. After her heart defect was corrected by open-heart surgery, I quit the meat packing business and began selling my thin books of poetry door to door in Little Rock.

After 2 years of door-to-door poetry sales, other writers asked me to publish their books. To do so, I joined with another poet friend, Jon Looney, and formed August House Publishers. At first, it was a non-profit and published only Arkansas writers. Then single again, I also worked part time for two years as a poet in residence in the Little Rock School District. Then I met Liz Smith of Pine Bluff. We married and she began to work with me at August House, first in PR and then as editor. She was a better editor than I, which I appreciated. Eventually, when August House was changed to a stock corporation, I made Liz an equal owner. We then published southern regional titles, including The Redneck Bride, a novel by Memphis probation officer John Fergus Ryan. Ryan's novel received national reviews. Film rights were optioned by commedian Henry Gibson. During my tenure as president of August House Publishers, we published over 600 book and audio titles and became a corporate sponsor of the National Storytelling Festival. Perhaps the high point of those years was the friendship of Dee A. Brown, whose nonfiction title Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has become an American classic. I first met Mr. brown when selling my books of poems door-to-door. (He had already purchased my little book of poems at Jim Bell's Publisher's Bookshop before I knocked on his door. August House was honored to publish two titles by Dee Brown during my tenure as president.) My daughter, Lucy Rose Parkhurst, attended many storytelling festivals with Liz and me during her formative years. During one set at the National Storytelling Festival, as she listened to Ed Stivender weave a folktale, she responded quietly to his introduction of the protagonist's coming travails, by saying "I know, there were three problems...." After 25 years, the company was sold to a group of investors in Atlanta, Geogia. Ironically, the story of the company's founding told on their web site does not mention those first 25 years. Now I operate Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, which was first formed in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is now operated at Marion, Michigan. Parkhurst Brothers authors include storytellers Elizabeth Ellis, Bobby Norfolk, Julie Herrera, Gerald Fierst, Lyn Ford, Sherry Norfolk, Jane Stenson, Lorna Czarnota, Len Froyen,Loren Neimi, Little Rock Nine member Dr. Terrence Roberts and the remarkable psychologist, George K. Simon, Ph.D. Over the years, I have honed my editing skills to the extent that I now edit several titles a year, as well as overseeing the production and promotion of Parkhurst Brothers titles. One day, I may resume active authorship myself, but for now I am honored to help birth the works of other writers.