"Karen A. Parker is an author, book coach, entrepreneur, and Secular Buddhist dedicated to helping you take your writing career to the next level."

Karen A. Parker is a Black, bi, nonbinary author and editor of speculative fiction, and they’re determined to help you take your writing to the next level. Their enthusiasm, patience, and careful sensitivity for storytelling is informed by a deep, academic understanding of fiction writing as a craft and a well-rounded view of book publishing as a business.

After graduating cum laude from UC Irvine with a BA in English, a Creative Writing Emphasis in Fiction, and a minor in Japanese Language and Literature, they taught English in Gifu, Japan, for three years as an Assistant Language Teacher. Having graduated UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA Program, they researched African oral storytelling traditions and Black liberation for their POC-coded epic fantasy novel, from which an early set of pages serves as their thesis manuscript. Their remastered short story collection, The Art of Capturing Phantoms: Definitive Edition, has received critical acclaim and has earned them not only an Associate level membership with the esteemed Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association but also membership within the prestigious Codex Writers Group.

As a book coach, editor, and educator, they are passionate about amplifying diverse, marginalized, and underrepresented voices wherever and whenever they can. Serving as the editor of the Voice to Books column for The Coachella Review, they gained the leadership skills necessary to facilitate the production of high-quality book reviews across multiple genres. They have since sharpened their editorial skills as a participant in the Sourcebooks BIPOC Editorial Training Program, a mentee in Tessera Editorial’s BIPOC Mentorship Program, a mentor in the LGBTQ+ Editors Association, and an Impact Fellow of Author Accelerator. When they’re not reading, writing, or editing, they enjoy cooking, cartomancy, composing music, critting in Dungeons & Dragons, and completing their video game collection.

  Sensitivity / Expert

  • White (German ancestry), Black (African American), Indigenous Native American heritage
  • "Sounding white," xenophobia, living in Japan as a foreigner
  • Languages: English and some Japanese
  • Bisexual, graysexual
  • Nonbinary, femme-presenting, masc-presenting, gender identity confusion, gender dysphoria
  • Generalized anxiety disorder, mild depression
  • Secular Buddhism, tarot, Western astrology, some Christianity
  • Puberty, PMS, menstruation, hormone cycles
  • Biracial upbringing
  • Middle class, college graduate
  • English literature, Japanese language and literature
  • Freelance, self-employment, contract-based employment
  • Creative writing, some musical composition knowledge
  • Running TTRPGs, livestreaming, video games, anime

 Preferred Genres

Fantasy  science fiction  horror 

 Avoided Genres

Non-consensual sex scenes  Christian fiction 



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