2018 Creator Biography
(Adapted from Huginn & Muninn publishers author bio.)
J.D. Thompson was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was raised in an urban, working-class neighborhood before his family moved to a small rural town in Grady County, Oklahoma. His father is a professional musician and his mother was a professional ballet dancer who studied psychology before ultimately entering a career in experimental education and film scoring.
The first time Thompson got into trouble for making art was when he drew on his parents’ new bed sheets at age 5. The first time he got sent home from school was for drawing “satanic” pictures during class (the drawings were actually renditions of Jim Henson characters). The first money he ever earned on his own was for drawing portraits, but girls and guitars took his attention away from visual arts during his later teenage years. By the age of 21, Thompson felt alienated from what he describes as a strain of “militant nihilism” in American culture. He left the United States to get reacquainted with the old world, traveling Europe for several years, and earning a living as a street performer. While in Europe he developed a close attachment to Irish culture and has called Ireland his second home where he learned to appreciate new dimensions to the art and craft of storytelling.
Thompson went on to become an accomplished songwriter and guitarist, creating his first original album, Chasing Demons, with Grammy Award-winning producer, Lou Adler. However, he quickly became bored with performing and left the music business to travel, scraping a living as a freelance graphic designer and writer.
In 2015, several of Thompson’s articles on pop culture and censorship were published by Playboy. This enabled him to intensify his work as a journalist as well as a motion-picture director, creating three documentaries in only two years. His films received acclaim at various international film festivals. Then, in 2017, Thompson began a new creative journey, returning to his roots as a visual artist while continuing to write and make documentaries. His documentary work brought him into contact with Huginn & Muninn publishers, leading to H&M’s publication of his first book, The Wolf Clan of Erin.
Today, Thompson fuses his varied creative career experiences and real-life adventures with his passion for art and story-telling in a variety of media. He credits his parents with encouraging his creative endeavors at a young age, but he insists that he never considered himself an “artist” and still prefers the title “skäld” – a composer and reciter of poems honoring heroes and their deeds.