K.S.R. Kingworth is the pen name of Kare Parker (pronounced keh-ree) — a multilingual author, philologist, and musician who has spent the better part of her life listening for words that have not been spoken yet.

 

In July 2023, she was cat-sitting on a street in San Miguel de Allende whose name translates to Souls, when she heard a single word whispered in her ear. Primørdiya. Above her head she saw a completed puzzle, every piece assembled, facing away from her. The picture was facing the stars. She understood immediately that she would spend years turning it around.

 

Nearly three years later, Carli Rockell and the Fire Seed is that picture, finally turned around.

 

She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, taught herself ancient Greek at fourteen for the pleasure of it, raised her children speaking French in the home, and has lived on three continents. 

 

She studied for a term at Cambridge and graduated in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Utah. She writes from a place her neighbors call The Nosebleed, high on a hill above a colonial city whose walls are painted ochre and rose and deep teal.

 

Her previous middle grade fantasy, Secret Speakers and the Search for Selador’s Gate, received a starred review from School Library Journal, VOYA, and the C.S. Lewis Society of California and was compared to the works of Tolkien, Rowling, and Lewis. It was narrated by Simon Vance and sold primarily to libraries across the United States.

 

After fourteen years of silence, she returned to writing because a story arrived that she could not refuse. And because her mother got up off her knees one afternoon, called at exactly the right moment, and said: I just finished praying you would keep writing for youth.

 

K.S.R. Kingworth believes that good stories are good medicine. That the world is stranger and more beautiful than anyone told us, and it’s good to be alive.