Book Coach Spotlight: From ESL Teacher + MFA Grad to Book Coach
What is the path to becoming a book coach? Author Accelerator Certified book coaches answer 7 questions about their journey. Today, we feature one of Author Accelerator Impact Fellows, Karen Parker.
1. What led you to book coaching? How did you hear about it and how did you know it would be a good fit for you?
I think most of my life experience has pointed me toward helping others and storytelling, and book coaching happens to be a beautiful marriage of the two that fits squarely into my Zone of Genius. However, if I had to name just one thing that kind of kickstarted the whole journey, it would be my time living and working in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher.
During my three years there, I taught English as a foreign language from first through ninth grade, and I also had the honor and privilege of working directly with two junior high school students who entered their respective municipal English speech contests. Helping to polish their speeches and to give them the confidence to tell their stories has been one of the absolute highlights of my career thus far, and it has lit a fire within me to do the same for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers of speculative and commercial fiction like myself.
When I discovered Author Accelerator’s Book Coaching Fellowship for “BIPOC and all groups traditionally underrepresented in publishing,” I was so impressed. They understood the challenges many marginalized publishing professionals face, and in response, they offered three fellowship spots which covered the cost of certification for one genre and provided extensive monthly support.
Since I had just missed the application window in late 2022, I had to wait a whole year for the application to re-open. So, when I got to that Book Coaching Fellowship web page on December 1, 2023, I submitted my application lightning-fast and was over-the-moon when I received my acceptance in February 2024.
2. How has your background prepared you to be a book coach? What skills/talents/experiences feel most relevant?
Growing up, I always enjoyed giving a listening ear to my friends, and I always had a journal by my side to capture my story ideas and type them up later on my computer. Of course, this led to me graduating cum laude with BA in English, a Creative Writing Emphasis in Fiction, and a minor in Japanese Language and Literature from UC Irvine. And then, in March 2022, I accepted admission into UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program, where I will earn my degree in Creative Writing (Fiction) in June 2024 (yay!).
When I left Japan and returned to the United States in 2022 to pursue my MFA, I had immediately started hunting for opportunities in publishing that primarily supported emerging underrepresented professionals. Since then, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of experience that informs my growing practice as a book coach in-training such as being the Editor of the Voice to Books column for The Coachella Review to promote DEIB-informed book reviews, joining the Sourcebooks BIPOC Editorial Training Program to learn more about editorial acquisitions, becoming a member of the LGBTQ+ Editors Association to foster mentorship within the community, and most recently becoming a Freelance Copyeditor and Developmental Editor with Tessera Editorial after being a mentee in their BIPOC Mentorship, to name just a few.
And those really are just a few of the experiences that have helped me bring more to the table as a book coach in-training! I could list so many more, but my LinkedIn page is better for that if anybody’s curious. In any case, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, marginalized and underrepresented professionals–even those with a college-level education like me–have to take every opportunity they can get to become skilled through other means when they aren’t accepted into an internship program right away or can’t afford to work at one if the internship happens to be unpaid.
After hearing so many people say, “No,” it felt amazing to hear the folks at Author Accelerator say, “Yes!” and offer me a fellowship. The importance of having a community behind your back that will support you in your creative and professional aims is paramount in such a cutthroat industry like publishing, both on the freelance and full-time sides. And it feels good to know that I’ll be going through the certification course and be supported beyond it with that knowledge and comfort.
3. What is your relationship to reading, writing, and/or creativity? What kinds of books do you read? What other creative work do you do?
I’m sure that it will surprise people to know that I did not grow up reading a lot of books! Rather, I grew up consuming and writing stories wherever and whenever I could, scribbling in journals and watching TV shows on the weekends. As a ‘90s kid specifically, I grew up on a steady diet of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, and all sorts of cartoons and anime on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, 4Kids Entertainment, and Kids’ WB.
I was just a creative kid in general. I loved to sing, dance, act out make-believe adventures with my characters, and just get lost in my imagination. I currently have on-and-off periods where I even compose music for my upcoming novel as if it was a video game or a film, and I’ve even written songs for some of the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns that I’ve run as the Game Master. Anything to keep the creative wheels turning is fair game!
In terms of the books I like to read now, I really enjoy reading speculative and commercial fiction from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers that take on contemporary issues surrounding identity politics in secondary-world settings. Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Dr. Nnedi Okorafor, Karen Lord, and Linda Addison have all helped me break down my literary and writing barriers so that I can come into my voice as a Black, bi, nonbinary author and book coach in-training.
4. What is the last best book you read?
So, the last best book I read technically isn’t even published yet because I was very fortunate enough to receive an advanced review copy through Netgalley, but I have to mention it here because it’s just so good. As a book coach or a developmental editor, I would’ve loved to work on a book like this, and I can only imagine how amazing the author’s team was while working on it.
C.G. Drews’ Don’t Let the Forest In is the author’s queer YA dark cottagecore horror debut with fabulous ace representation, and its prose hooked me like a rose’s thorn from the very first line. The way C.G. handles male teenage angst while pairing horror with queerness is just so brilliant and spine-chilling, and every chapter is polished to a gleam. You can find my complete review of the book on Goodreads here, and please pre-order it or buy it when it comes out in October 2024. You will be pleasantly haunted by it.
CW for blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, and self-harm.
5. What do you believe will be your biggest challenge around being a book coach and what are you doing to address it?
It sounds trite, but I see myself struggling to accept that I can and should be a book coach in a world that tells me I should be something else.
For most of my life, I was taught through the institutionalized structure of the American education system and society at large that the best way to achieve financial success is to be a cog in someone else’s machine, and I don’t think that’s true. For example, as a student at school, you’re paid in high grades for completing assignments satisfactorily. As an employee for another company, you’re paid a salary for projects done well and maybe even considered for bonuses. Yet every now and again, I’d learn about those that make it big by thinking big and wonder how to be like them. If two guys selling crossword puzzle books can start their own publishing company that’s still around a hundred years later, I can run my own business, too.
And to be perfectly clear, I have no regrets about going to college or getting my MFA. I am a lifelong learner that excels in formal educational environments, and the experience and education I gained from all my teachers and mentors has been invaluable in my career thus far. What I do regret is that I didn’t and couldn’t spend any additional time learning about how to run my own business early on.
Which is why, to address it, I’ll be reading as much as I can about all the great artists and entrepreneurs that came before me through books like Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking, Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap, Laura Garnett’s The Genius Habit, and Tara Mohr’s Playing Big–all of which are part of the required or recommended reading for my certification, as it so happens to be. I’ll also just be talking to people and verbalizing these fears, hopes, and desires so that they’re not just festering in my head.
6. Who do you think your ideal client might be and how do you expect to serve them?
My ideal client is a writer who isn’t afraid to explore their unique relationship with identity politics, who isn’t afraid to question their upbringing, who isn’t afraid to retell old myths and legends from their culture in thought-provoking ways, who isn’t afraid to create new worlds while questioning the world we live in, and/or who isn’t afraid to speak truth to power. They don’t have to be all of these things at once, but if they’re willing to accept their identities as storytellers and to go through that journey while navigating their rich and beautiful souls, I’m willing to go on that journey with them.
Above all, if you’re someone who puts yourself into your stories and doesn’t just treat writing fiction like an intellectual or philosophical exercise, I’d love to work with you.
7. What impact do you hope to make in our industry?
Within the book coaching industry, I want to ensure that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ voices within the speculative and commercial genres are heard and prioritized. Above all, I strive to take my clients to the next level of their writing careers and to give them the tools necessary to ensure their continued self-empowerment. That way, they’ll have the power to uplift those in their own individual communities as well.
Paraphrasing from the Burkina Faso proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together
You can visit Karen on Instagram and at karenaparker.com
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