Parker-Chan was born in
New Zealand to a Malaysian-Chinese mother and a white father. They were raised in Australia, where they felt disconnected with their racial identity and with the stereotypical representation of Asian characters in fiction. They say in interview: "I was raised very much by a tiger parent in a part of Adelaide with a large Chinese, Malaysian and Southeast Asian Chinese population. I was a scholarship kid and I went to a posh private school where my peers were all the offspring of doctors and lawyers, and I was pushed to also become a doctor or lawyer and achieve high results. So I feel I grew up in a very classically second- generation middle-class Asian way, but I was definitely not perceived as Asian." When they moved to Asia as a young adult, they discovered Asian dramas, and began to understand that "...Asians could be any and every kind of character: the heroes, the villains, the love interests, warriors, scholars." They did graduate work on the subjects of war crimes and restorative justice, and worked as a
diplomat, representing the Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in
Timor-Leste, and as an international development adviser for gender equality and LGBTQ rights in
Indonesia, before becoming a writer. Their interest in writing novels began with romantic fan fiction, and a desire for better queer representation in literature. In 2021, Mantle Books published
She Who Became the Sun, which became a
Sunday Times Number 1 bestseller, won several awards, and has been translated into 15 languages. This was followed in 2023 by
He Who Drowned the World, which concludes the
Radiant Emperor duology. ==Personal life==