Keven Baxter

Who is Keven Baxter? He’s an award-winning author of middle-grade fantasy who writes stories where thrilling adventure meets the deeper truths of faith, hope, and courage. His books invite young readers into imaginative worlds where light breaks through darkness, heroes rise in surprising ways, and biblical wisdom shapes every journey. His mission is simple and big-hearted: to help kids discover the hero inside and understand that their purpose is rooted in something far greater than themselves.

Baxter grew up in a small Northern California town, the youngest of five. His boyhood was all wooded chaparral mountains, apricot orchards, and wide-open sky. He struggled as a young reader, stuck at the bottom of his class—until a sixth-grade teacher handed him The White Mountains trilogy. That single spark lit a lifelong love of story, and it still fuels the wonder woven through his fiction today.

He studied economics at UC Santa Barbara, where he met his wife, Claire. He later earned a law degree and MBA from UC Berkeley and spent thirty years in California’s technology world. Through all those busy years, he read bedtime stories to his two daughters—evenings that taught him just how powerful shared imagination can be. Wanting his girls to know the joy of serving others, Baxter founded Sports Gift, a Christian nonprofit that delivered more than 300,000 pieces of sports equipment to children in over sixty countries. Working alongside young volunteers gave him a real-world understanding of the pressures kids face. In 2019 he earned a master’s degree in theology from Southern Seminary and later served with an international relief organization supporting persecuted Christians—experiences that deepened his sense of courage, sacrifice, and hope. Those themes run straight through his books. Baxter is the author of Kingdom in the Redwoods, a #1 New Release, its sequel, Kingdom in Peril, and his newest middle-grade fantasy, Secrets of Sage—a tale of four friends who stumble into a hidden world and learn that true wisdom begins with humility. He lives in Southern California with Claire, near his daughters and grandchildren, and keeps writing stories that shine a light on God’s goodness and inspire kids to be brave.