Benson Young Parkinson (born 1960) is a Latter-day Saint novelists, literary critic, and biographer.

Biography

Parkinson was born in Provo, Utah

Provo, Utah

Provo is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Utah, located about south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front. Provo is the county seat of Utah County and lies between the cities of Orem to the north and Springville to the south...

, and grew up in Ogden

Ogden, Utah

Ogden is a city in Weber County, Utah, United States. Ogden serves as the county seat of Weber County. The population was 82,825 according to the 2010 Census. The city served as a major railway hub through much of its history, and still handles a great deal of freight rail traffic which makes it a...

. He served a mission

Mormon missionary

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most active modern practitioners of missionary work, with over 52,000 full-time missionaries worldwide, as of the end of 2010...

 for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France. In 1985 he graduated from Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...

. He has written two novels, The MTC: Set Apart (Aspen, 1995) and Into the Field (Aspen, 2000), as well as a biography of S. Dilworth Young

S. Dilworth Young

Seymour Dilworth Young was a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 36 years, from 1945 until his death....

 (Covenant, 1994). He has also written many reviews of books and articles on trends in Latter-day Saint fiction. Parkinson founded AML-List, a discussion list sponsored by the Association for Mormon Letters

Association for Mormon Letters

The Association for Mormon Letters is a nonprofit founded in 1976 to promote quality writing "by, for, and about Mormons." The broadness of this definition of Mormon literature has led the AML to focus on a wide variety of work that has sometimes been neglected in the Mormon community...

, and served as its first moderator. With Christopher K. Bigelow he founded and co-edited Irreantum, a Mormon literary magazine.

He is married and has five children and currently resides in Ogden, Utah.