Chris Kurtz: Adventure is just a page away...

Chris Kurtz is a talented teacher, storyteller, and writer. In addition to The Adventures of a South Pole Pig, he wrote the middle-grade novel The Pup Who Cried Wolf and has co-written picture books with his sister Jane Kurtz. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.

For the first five years of his life, Chris lived with his parents and siblings in a very remote village in Southwestern Ethiopia called Maji. Water was pumped up to the house from a stream using the flow of water to overcome gravity, and nights were illuminated by battery or kerosene. When Chris was five years old, the family moved to live in the capital city of Addis Ababa. Chris started school at Good Shepherd, a missionary school with an American curriculum and American teachers. Until the tenth grade, Chris enjoyed music, sports, literature, and endured religious studies and chapel.

In 1974, Chris’s family left the country as a family. Chris attended and graduated from Portland State University as a teacher and began teaching. In 1987, he returned to Ethiopia to teach English at a girls' school.

Chris currently teaches third grade in Portland Oregon. He has three grown kids, a wife, and a dog.