The Life & Work of Amanda Starks

Amanda Lee Starkes ( February 9th, 1996 - December 15th, 2087 ) also known by her online alias as Izzora, was an author, poet, online influencer and mental health advocate. She was the author of the epic fantasy Fate of Fire series ( 2035 - 2048 ) and the high fantasy Forest of Kalmera trilogy ( 2040 - 2045 ).

From 2018 to 2033, Starks published over 400 poems, short stories, and think pieces online, garnering a small but dedicated fan base. Her first poetry collection about her tumultuous decade battling severe mental illness, RE:SURGENCE, was published online for free in 2024 and remains as one of her most talked about and controversial works.

In 2025 she would publish the first appearance of An End of Gods and Dust on Vocal.Media, a novelette length post-apocalyptic fantasy that would later go on to be her first self-published work.

Starks’ first debut novel, CASTLING ( 2030 ), a young adult dark fantasy standalone story, would set the tone for her long creative writing career. CASTLING aided in re-inventing an otherwise stagnant and oversaturated young adult market and ignited a wave of new works and authors who approached young adult stories differently.

Starks strongly advocated for better mental illness representation in media given the increase in depression and anxiety disorders in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic ( 2020 - 2022 ), especially in young adults. 

Later, while in the middle of her work for the Fate of Fire series, Starks would go on to found the Writer’s First Foundation, a non-profit organization that aimed to provide and advocate for better pay, medical coverage, and retirement plans for authors. After her death in 2087, the foundation went on to help thousands of authors pursue writing as a full-time career and continues its mission to this day.

Education

Starks was always in love with stories. In her grade school years, she excelled in her English classes and would later be recommended to advanced English classes in High School. Despite this, she initially pursued a Geoscience degree when she attended the University of Texas of the Permian Basin ( 2014 - 2016 ) with a Texas Science scholarship.

After the onset of severe mental illness, Starks took a semester off from study, returning to her education at a new college, Sul-Ross State University ( 2017 - 2018 ) where she initially continued to pursue Geoscience as her degree. 

In the fall of 2017, Starks would attend a creative writing class which helped her realize her passion and potential for storytelling. She entered a Scary Short Story Writing Contest on campus and placed second with her short fantasy horror story The Forest was Mute.

By the end of the semester, she would be invited by the University's English department to join the English Honor’s Society and was encouraged to read her work on campus during a department showcase event.

In 2018, her mental health would once more decline rapidly, and she would be forced to drop her final semester in order to get professional help. 

A Decade of Severe Mental Illness

From 2016 to 2026, Starks battled with Major Depressive Disorder and Acute Anxiety Disorder. She was initially diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder at 14 years of age, but would not be given any medical assistance beyond therapy until 2016. In college, she would develop Acute Anxiety Disorder which disrupted her day to day studies and routines.

During one of her first interviews after the publication of CASTLING, Starks would reveal that she nearly took her life several times and also self-harmed during this time period.

Many critics point to this tumultuous time as the source of her powerful, emotionally vulnerable writing and future advocacy roles. Most of her work includes characters with similar disorders, with stories and plots that mirror the inner battles of the mentally ill. In her poetry, she was also vulnerable, raw, and honest, garnering admiration and respect alongside healthy amounts of criticism once her popularity blossomed into the mainstream after her death.

While Starks never showed any public signs of struggle, it was well documented that she would continue to have periods of severe mental illness that would hinder her work, especially after the passing of her sister and later her parents with each halting all writing progress for several years.

Online Persona

Beyond her writing career, Starks also fostered a tight-knit community online around her online alias: Izzora. As a college student, Starks was introduced to online games and quickly found comfort in the pockets of various gaming communities. 

The most influential community that launched her Twitch & YouTube channels was the one surrounding Valheim, an open world survival crafting game inspired by Vikings and Norse mythology. As an active member she would win multiple building contests, craft stories and lore for various servers, and share her work during the online convention known as Val-Con to thousands of viewers. 

Even after her writing career began to take off, Starks would continue to stream to her friends and fans in various gaming communities and make video highlights and essays on some of her favorite stories in videogames. The channel remained small during her tenure, but since her death it has amassed over a million subscribers and remains a fascinating and nostalgic window into the author’s past for fans.

Writing & Adaptations

Starks’s work was greatly influenced by music, video games, various media and her own personal experiences with mental health. Some of the biggest named influences were the Game of Thrones TV Show ( 2011 - 2019 ), the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy ( 2001 - 2003 ), the Dark Souls videogame trilogy ( 2011 - 2016 ), music by the band Sleep Token ( 2016 ), and various animated movies and TV.

Due to these influences, Starks primarily wrote in the genres of epic and dark fantasy, jumping from young adult to adult age categories and content. Her most well known fantasy series, Fate of Fire, spanned eight novels: Evergreen ( 2035 ), Evanesce ( 2036 ), Dark Side of the Moon ( 2038 ), Burn Bright ( 2041 ), Wanderer ( 2043 ), War Crossed ( 2043 ), Ultraviolent ( 2046 ) and The Lightning Prodigy ( 2048 ). It encompassed rich worldbuilding and long, complex timelines that spanned thousands of years, similar to Tolkien’s expansive lore in his own work ( Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit ).

Starks would dive into high fantasy with the creation of the Forest of Kalmera trilogy ( 2040 - 2045 ), one of the first series to finally establish a blueprint for the new adult category that had struggled to form properly for decades. It was also the first time for the author that she’d written LGBTQ+ characters as main characters which garnered praise from her readers, but also criticism from OWN voices authors and groups.

“She’s pandering to a community she isn’t a part of.” - Karen Whitacre, gay rights activist and author on her social media platform in 2044.

**It’s now well known after her death that Starks identified herself under the ace umbrella.

In 2050, after a two year break to mourn the loss of a family member, Starks returned with the Tidecaller ( 2050 ), a standalone young adult fantasy novel inspired by Greek and ancient Polynesian mythology, which received lukewarm reviews from critics due to its lackluster worldbuilding and lack of scope, with many calling for a return to form from the epic fantasy author.

A few years later, these worries were squashed with the release of Starborn: Lunar Rebirth ( 2053 ) an old manuscript Starks teased over a decade ago that featured inspirations from cultures across the globe, ancient stories tied to the constellations, as well as Mesopotamian history, symbology and mythology. Readers praised the breadth of worldbuilding and the depth of the characters which spawned discussions online about the author’s representation of Astrology and the twelve zodiacs as distinct characters. The success of the first novel would go on to spawn a sequel, Starborn: Ophiuchus Rising ( 2055 ), which further reassured readers that Stark's worldbuilding and storytelling prowess was intact. 

Despite the success of her body of work, Starks famously refused to have any of her novels adapted into live film despite her admiration and love of the Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings adaptations, insisting her stories remain in animated form only. This would hurt the reach of her work, contributing to her flying under the radar of the mainstream for her entire career.

“I find animation to be the ultimate storytelling medium. It incorporates motion, music, writing and art, and showcases the endless potential of the creative human spirit.” - Amanda Starks, interview with the Independent Press Society ( 2041 )

Her first and only work to be adapted into animation was CASTLING in 2042 by Powerhouse Animation Studios ( Castlevania, Castlevania: Nocturne ). It received positive reviews with many viewers enjoying the blend of the familiar thrones plot ( Game of Thrones ) with the supernatural horror of the beloved exorcist movies of the early 21st century ( The Exorcist ) without falling back on tired tropes. It was one of the few times that Stark’s work saw some significant attention.

There was also an open world videogame inspired by the Fate of Fire series made in collaboration with Santa Monica Studio ( God of War, God of War: Ragnarok ) called Fire of the Last Bolvanir ( 2055 ), with narrative direction from Starks herself. Many praised the choice of studio, as their experience with the narrative-driven God of War games helped bring the potency of Starks’ writing to life through a hand-crafted world and cinematic cutscenes.

She famously streamed a month-long subathon on Twitch after the game came out, garnering thousands of views and millions of impressions online. However, the game never did reach a substantial player base and would quickly fade out after only a year on Steam. After her death, the game would explode in popularity with a now current active player count of over 500,000 players.

Final Years & Legacy

In 2060, Starks would pull back from publishing novels and return to short stories and poetry as her main form of work. She also heavily focused on the Writer’s First Foundation to help new and emerging authors publishing for the first time. She also took interviews and delivered essays online centering on mental health and illness advocacy, presenting at universities across the United States with several others overseas. 

During this time she would also spend several years in Australia, visiting M. Mitchell, another author who’d been her fast friend for many decades, after the passing of Starks’ husband in 2075. There they would collaborate on many short stories and poetry collections that wouldn’t be published till after Stark’s death.

In 2087, Stark’s health would decline rapidly, and after suffering a stroke would pass on the night of December 15th, 2087.

She would be survived by two children, her daughter Elizabeth Cherri Starkes who pursued a degree in education and taught creative writing at Colorado State University, and her son William Lawrence Starkes who became a curator of all her work, notes, and unpublished manuscripts while pursuing a degree and career in history.

The children, together with M. Mitchell, would collect and organize Stark’s massive body of world building notes from her various novels and would posthumously publish it as Worlds Beyond: A Collection of Myths and Stories by Amanda Starks. Unexpectedly, this decision would be what would catapult Stark’s work into the mainstream eye.

Starks’ legacy, while posthumously discovered, reveals the struggles of a writer from the early 21st century who never gave up on her work despite mental illness, various world-changing events and losses, and who worked to lift the voices of underpaid and overworked authors, and who championed awareness for young adult mental illness and health.

Now her body of work is enjoyed and analyzed world-wide by millions, taught in English classes in the United States and abroad, shared online as video essays on YouTube, and used as examples and templates for future generations of authors to use as inspiration and guides. 

**There have been talks of adapting the Fate of Fire series into a live-action movie series, though the new global army of fans that has grown since the release of Worlds Beyond has signed a petition to make it an animated movie series in the author’s honor.
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