Jane Kurtz was born in Portland, Oregon, but when she
was two years old, her parents moved to Ethiopia. Jane grew up in Maji,
a small town in the southwest corner of the country.
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Since there were
no televisions, radios, or movies, her memories are of climbing
mountains, wading in rivers by the waterfalls, listening to stories,
and making up her own stories, which she and her sisters acted out for
days at a time.
When she was in fourth grade, she went to boarding school in Addis
Ababa. Her family left Ethiopia in the late 1970s, but a decade later,
first her brother and his family and then her older sister and her
family went back to teach in a girls' school in Addis Ababa.
By the time Jane came back to the United States for college, she
felt there was no way to talk about her childhood home to people here.
It took nearly twenty years to finally find a way - through her
children's books. Now she often speaks in schools and at conferences,
sharing memories from her own childhood and bringing in things for the
children to touch and taste and see and smell and hear from Ethiopia.
"It's been a healing and inspiring experience," she says, "to
re-connect with my childhood and also be able to help people know just
a little of the beautiful country where I grew up."
E. B. Lewis illustrated her first Ethiopian story, Fire on the Mountain.
He used photographs that Jane sent him and photographs which he took of
Ethiopian families in his home city of Philadelphia to help him create
the illustrations in the book.
When Jane's brother came back from teaching in Ethiopia and told her
about the street boys who taught him to raise pigions, she and her
brother, Christopher, wrote Only a Pigeon,
a book that was published in spring 1997. Earl Lewis and Chris Kurtz
traveled to Ethiopia in 1995 so Earl could do the art research for the
story.
Floyd Cooper illustrated the second story, Pulling the Lion's Tail, using photographs and his own imagination to make the story of Almaz come to life.
Since the publications of her first books Jane has published a book each
year. She has written several more picture books, a novel, and resources for
educators. Part of her time is spent visiting in schools. She worked in
classrooms with elementary and high school students for over ten years and
then for another ten years at the University of North Dakota where most of
her students, especially the ones on the UND football team, were bigger than
she was...so she is very comfortable working in classrooms.
Jane currently lives in Kansas with her husband, Leonard Goering,
and where both of them enjoy visits from their children. Together
they have traveled to Ethiopia, the site of one of the literacy
projects Jane supports.
