Karen Kingsbury planned on becoming a lawyer — until a gruff journalism professor at Pierce Junior College called her name in front of nearly 100 classmates and changed her mind.
“You will never, ever stop writing,” Professor Bob Scheibel told her, according to a personal essay Kingsbury wrote for Guideposts.org, adapted from a piece originally published on Bookish.com.
Scheibel didn’t stop there. He assigned her, on the spot, to the staff of the school’s award-winning newspaper, a moment Kingsbury says convinced her that writing, not law, was what God had planned for her all along.
Kingsbury had wanted to be a novelist since kindergarten, when she memorized Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and begged for lined paper instead of dolls. Her father used to tell her, “One day all the world will know what a gift God has given you.” But doubt crept in during her senior year of high school, and she nearly walked away from writing for good, planning to study law instead until Scheibel’s Journalism 100 class reset her course.
Two years after her first #1 New York Times bestseller, Kingsbury tracked down her retired professor to thank him. “I wouldn’t be a writer if you hadn’t said those words,” she told him. She said he grew quiet on the phone, then admitted, “I had no idea.”
Related: Karen Kingsbury Can’t Wait for Audiences to Watch This Movie on GAF
Decades later, Kingsbury has sold tens of millions of novels and turned dozens of them into movies and series, many of which Movieguide® has reviewed through its biblical lens on entertainment.
Movieguide® gave SOMEONE LIKE YOU, the 2024 movie based on her novel of the same name, a perfect 4-out-of-4 quality rating, calling it a “heartwarming tale about love and reconciliation” that “holds strongly to family values and the sanctity of life in the womb.”
THE CHRISTMAS RING, the 2025 Fathom Entertainment release starring Jana Kramer and Kelsey Grammer, also earned 4 out of 4 stars. Movieguide® praised its “strong Christian worldview” that “extols Scripture, faith, prayer, and the Christmas Nativity story.”
THE BAXTERS, the Amazon Prime series drawn from Kingsbury’s bestselling family saga, received the same top score. Movieguide® called it “an entertaining series about a loving family going through multiple issues” with “a strong Christian, moral worldview,” though the outlet noted its frank handling of an affair storyline makes it “designed for mature viewers.”
Kingsbury’s Pure Flix series A THOUSAND TOMORROWS, based on her novel about a bull rider and a barrel racer falling in love, drew similar marks from Movieguide®, which found a “very strong Christian, moral worldview” running through episodes where characters “read Bibles, pray for one another, attend church, and reject ungodly actions.”
Several of these adaptations, including SOMEONE LIKE YOU and THE CHRISTMAS RING, were directed by Kingsbury’s own son, Tyler Russell, who also adapted the script for A THOUSAND TOMORROWS. Kingsbury has described her body of work as “life-changing fiction,” stories meant to be “physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual” all at once.
That description traces back to a college classroom in the San Fernando Valley, and a professor who refused to let her give up on the gift her father always said God had given her.
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