About KT SPARKS
KT Sparks is a writer and farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Her work has appeared in Pank, Kenyon Review, Electric Lit, Lit Hub, Southern Review of Fiction, Largehearted Boy, Prime Number Magazine, Word Riot, Citron Review, Jersey Devil Press, WhiskeyPaper, and Jellyfish Review, was anthologized in The Lobsters Run Free: Bath Flash Fiction Volume Two and Tulip Tree Press’s Stories that Need to be Told 2019, and was recognized in the New Millennium Writing Awards and The Moth short story competition. Sparks received her MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, where she served as an assistant fiction editor of Qu (a literary magazine).
Four Dead Horses is KT’s first novel and was released by Regal House Publishing in April of 2021. The book was a semifinalist in Southeast Missouri State University Press’s Nilsen Prize for a First Novel, took first place in the James River Writers’ Best Unpublished Novel Contest, was excerpted in Richmond Magazine, and won Regal House Publishing’s 2019 Petrichor Prize.
KT received an AB in Politics, Economics, Rhetoric, and Law from University of Chicago, an MA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, Brasenose College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte, an educational grounding that matches her lifelong interest in everything and mastery of nothing. She spent twenty-five years in Washington DC, most of it in the US Senate, as a policy analyst and speechwriter and continues to be involved in progressive politics, most recently with President Biden’s campaign. When she is not reading fiction (all types) or trying to banish weeds from the vegetable garden, she practices and studies Zen Buddhism, binges British detective series, and cooks stuff grown on the farm (or by her more talented neighbors). Her greatest passion is her large distended family, which includes children, stepchildren, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, parents, in-laws, exes, and seemingly unending concentric circles of spouses, partners, fiancés, more exes, and more spouses—shining bright and swirling outward, like the rings of Jupiter, but less dusty. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, dog, a fluctuating population of barn cats, and no horses, dead or alive, waiting for the kids to come visit, or at least call for God’s sake.
Awards for Four Dead Horses
2022 Foreword INDIES, finalist for Humor (Adult Fiction), Foreword Reviews
2022 National Indie Excellence Awards, winner for Comedy
2022 National Indie Excellence Awards, finalist for Regional Fiction
2019 Regal House Publishing Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, winner
2018 Southeast Missouri State University Press’s Nilsen Prize for a First Novel, semifinalist
2017 James River Writers Best Unpublished Novel, winner, judged by Brad Parks
Other Awards
2019 Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest, runner-up, judged by Geeta Kothari
2019 Prime Number Magazine Award for Short Fiction, runner-up, judged by Pinckney Benedict
2019 48th New Millennium Award for Nonfiction, finalist
2019 48th New Millennium Award for Fiction, finalist
2019 Stories That Need to be Told: The Contest, winner, Tulip Tree Press
2017 Bath Flash Fiction Award, shortlist
2017 Moth Short Story Award, shortlist, The Moth Magazine, judged by Belinda McKeon
2015 40th New Millennium Writings Fiction Contest, honorable mention