Gary Knippa - Illustrator
Gary Knippa was born in Giddings, Texas, and has lived in Central Texas all his life. After completing stints at Concordia University and the University of Texas, Gary began a forty-year career in real estate. A natural musician, Gary has played guitar since high school and now heads a 4-piece band known as “The Friends.” The Friends regularly perform for the Austin retirement community, as well as banquets, downtown Noonday concerts, and Memorial Day concerts at the Texas State Cemetery. Gary and his wife Carroll are the proud parents of three Eagle Scouts. In his spare time, Gary is an avid tennis player, enjoys an active church life, and ... loves to sketch!
Jim Swift - Audiobook Narrator
Jim Swift is a retired broadcast journalist who spent 36 years airing news stories for KXAN-TV, the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas. His nightly segment, “On the Porch with Jim Swift,” focused on feature and human-interest stories. It aired on KXAN’s local newscasts and appeared on other NBC news stations nationwide. Following his retirement in 2013, Jim spent seven years hosting “Porch Radio,” a thematic music and storytelling program on Texas’s only solar-powered radio station, Austin’s Sun Radio. His career has also included frequent narrations for the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife television show. Jim lives with his wife, Katy Nail, near Austin, in a home constructed entirely of interlocking concrete domes. There, they enjoy the bounty of Katy’s prolific garden and the wildlife attracted to their property’s native landscape, a National Wildlife Federation “Certified Wildlife Habitat.”