He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project.

[5] Born in the UK while his parents were studying there, Nii Parkes was raised from the age of three or four in Ghana,[6] where he was educated at Achimota School.

[10] Parkes runs regular workshops in the UK and set up a Writer's Fund in Ghana to promote writing among the country's youth.

[15] The production was directed by Femi Elufowoju Jr., and featured a cast including Jude Akuwudike and Marcy Dolapo Oni.

His debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, was published by Jonathan Cape in June 2009, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

He was the resident poet at Borders bookstores, where he hosted the monthly open mic at Charing Cross Road between 2001 and 2005.

[25] Parkes ran the Creative Writing course at the African University College of Communications (AUCC) in Accra, Ghana,[16] and sat on the Board of Trustees of pan-African literary initiative Writivism, with fellow writers Zukiswa Wanner, Chika Unigwe, NoViolet Bulawayo, E. C. Osondu and Lizzy Attree, until 2015.