About the authors

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE LINOCUT GRAPHIC NOVEL
Jiří Vydra was born in Liberec on April 26, 1981. He graduated from VOŠG in Hellichova street in Prague, Department of book graphics supervised by the professor of painting Milan Erazim.
The author makes commercial and independent graphics under the mark of VYDRA DESIGN. He also works as a dramaturg and author of design for the Štěk agency and its events in Liberec and Grabštejn Castle. He founded an organization DIVOZEMÍ which focuses on supporting the alternative culture in the region. He is the head of this organization as well as a dramaturg and graphic designer.
During his studies he created a series of books as his semester projects: A GRANDMA HAD … - a folding picture book consisting of color linocuts, a ballad MARRIAGE SHIRT – unfinished project of Erben’s Kytice as a graphic novel, and HOW I SAILED TO THE QUEEN OF THE NORTH - a book of drawings.
Graphic novel The Story of the Eternal Student was created by using the technique of engraving into lino . The story inspired by the ballad written by the Latvian author Karlis Skalbe was the author’s graduation project.
The author discovered Skalbe’s book as a child in his grandmother’s bookshelf and he admired the illustration on the book cover. The content of the book captured his interest only much later but the melanchonic fairy-tales immediately seized him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE TEXT
Kārlis Skalbe (1879-1945) was a modernist Latvian author. He wrote peoms, essays, and short stories but he is most known because of his fairy-tales. He even got a nickname – the king of fairy-tales.
He worked as a teacher for a short time but he lost his place due to his participation in the movement for Latvian independence. After the WWI, he fully participated in public and political life. In 1944, after part of Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, he left to Sweden. He died a year after that.
Kārlis Skalbe is known as an excellent story teller of modern fairy-tales. He wrote 72 of those and he is often compared to such authors ad Hans Christian Andersen or Oscar Wilde.  The morals of his fairy-tales are based on Christianity and also Latvian national folk literature which also influenced the formal side of his texts. Skalbe’s fairy-tales are appreciated because of their lyricism and poetic power but also for their original parables.