Coinciding with this was a love for reading: the more she read, the more she wrote. By the time junior high arrived, Parrish had started writing short stories in a notebook she still has to this day. Her teacher secretly entered one of her stories into a local contest, and she was awarded the grand prize: a fifty dollar savings bond. For the first time, she believed that something might come of her writing.
Upon entering high school, Parrish decided she wanted to write for a living, and she joined the high school newspaper. This experience created new and exciting writing opportunities for her. One of her articles caught the attention of the publisher of a community newspaper, who approached Parrish about writing a monthly column, offering ten dollars per article. She accepted the offer and continued the column through her senior year of high school.
After high school, Parrish attended Hood College, where she declared a major in English with a minor in Journalism. She joined the school newspaper, but she hated it there, and her tenure was short lived. Finding a summer internship at the local newspaper, The Cincinnati Post, Parrish was exposed to the day-to-day tasks of writing and journalism, which she described as an “incredible experience.”
The position required that she learn to write well on topics that she was not passionate about, like stories about pigeons or water safety, which helped to round out her writing abilities. One experience that impacted her during this period was when she responded to an article that was published in Newsweek. Her response was so thoughtful and thorough that Newsweek published it, and Parrish discovered the allure of national exposure.
After a brief stint at the University of Cincinnati and another internship at a local magazine, Parrish enrolled in Northern Michigan University, where she completed the remaining two and a half years of college. Parrish wanted to write about more mature topics for the school newspaper, but she found few opportunities to express herself authentically. Leaving the newspaper, Parrish had to find her own creative outlets, and she worked three more internships.
The first was a monthly publication targeted toward minorities and the LGBTQ community.