She vividly remembers her mother telling her of the story about the Fool archetype who never risks anything and ends up not achieving anything in life. She had always loved stories from a very young age given that her mother preferred to use stories as a teaching tool. As a child the family was full of adventure seeking and even went as far as a trip to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, an adventure that equally inspiring as it was terrifying. Natalie finds a lot of the inspiration for her Gothic novels from her upbringing in a Navy family.

Even though her roots are deep in the South of Mississippi, she migrated to the Kansas plains from where she lives with her partner Tessa Gratton, and several house monsters for good measure. Some of these programs include a project about climate change and greater cooperation with indigenous communities. When she is not so busy writing her novels or organizing her workshops and retreats she loves to collaborate with the University of Kansas on social responsibility programs. She attended the University of Southern Mississippi from where she graduated with a Bachelor in English, before proceeding to the University of Cincinnati to earn her MA in Women’s Studies. She was raise in a Navy family and hence having a life full of adventure was something as commonplace as having fairy tales read to you. She is also the founder of the annual workshops and retreats organized for established and aspiring writers called “Madcap Retreats”. Parker is the writer of the “Beware the Wild” series of novels that have become some of the most popular novels in the Southern Gothic sub-genre.

Natalie c parker