Jamie Parsley born in Fargo, North Dakota, the son of Albert and Joyce (Olson) Parsley.  He was raised in Harwood and West Fargo, attending school in Harwood and West Fargo, graduating from West Fargo High School in 1988.  While in high school, Jamie found a passion for poetry after taking a class taught by Cindy Bleier, in which he first encountered poets such as Walt, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, E. E. Cummings and William Carolos Williams.

Jamie is an accomplished and award-winning poet and writer.   His first book of poems, Paper Doves, Falling was published in 1992 when he was 22 years old. Over the next 32 years, he published fourteen more books of poems, including The Loneliness of Blizzards (Mellen Press, 1995), Cloud (Mellen Press, 1997), The Wounded Table (Pudding House Press, 1999), Earth into Earth (Enso Press, 2000), No Stars, No Moon (Mellen Press, 2004),  Ikon (Enso Press, 2005), Crow (Enso Press, 2012), That Word (North Star Press, 2014), Only Then (Pilgrim Soul Press, 2017) and most recently Salt (Kelsay Press, 2024). 

The book Just Once (Loonfeather Press, 2007) chronicled his diagnosis, treatment, and ultimate recovery from cancer in 2002. This Grass (Enso Press, 2009) was a book of poems written in collaboration with paintings by artist Gin Templeton. Fargo, 1957 (NDSU Press, 2010; reissued in 2021), probably his best-known book, was an elegiac chronicle of the 1957 tornado that struck Fargo, North Dakota. Echo (Benevolent Press, 2023) was a book of poems written in collaboration with paintings by artist Marjorie Schlossman.  He is also the author of a collection of short stories, The Downstairs Tenant and Other Stories (NDSU Press, 2014).  Several of his poems were set to music by composer Kyle Vanderburg in a song-cycle, The Notes Between the Notes and were presented at the Plains Arts Museum in Fargo in 2018.

In 2024, his poems, along with Marjorie’s Schlossman’s paintings, were showcased in a special exhibit at West Acres Shopping Center, Fargo.  His poems have been published in literary journals and anthologies in the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Russia.  In 2006 he was awarded an Individual Artists Fellowship from the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which received funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.  In 2004, he was designated an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota by North Dakota Poet Laureate Larry Woiwode.  In 2021, he was named Poet-in-Residence at Concordia College, Moorhead and began teaching at Concordia College in January 2022. He also currently teaches at the University of Jamestown in Jamestown, ND.  He taught at the University of Mary at its Fargo campus for 10 years.  

Jamie has a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College. He also studied at St. Joseph’s College, Standish, Maine, the School of Theology at Thornloe University in Sudbury, Ontario, and graduated with a master’s degree from Nashotah House Seminary, Nashotah, Wisconsin.  Jamie was ordained an Episcopal priest in 2004. He served as an Assistant Priest at Gethsemane Cathedral, Fargo, Chaplain to All Saints Episcopal Church, Valley City, ND and was Executive Assistant to the Bishop of the North Dakota Episcopal Diocese Jamie has, throughout his career, been a vocal champion for the full inclusion of all people in the arts, the church, and the community.