Gary Whitney

Gary Whitney began his career as a cartoonist, illustrator, animator, and author in 1974. He drew a weekly comic strip, Phoebe & the Pigeon People, (written by Jay Lynch) in the Chicago Reader from 1978-1990. In 1993 he began working as an animator for Calabash Animation in Chicago, retiring in 2017.

After a number of years of studying and teaching yoga, Gary worked from 2012-2019 creating Song of the Avatar, a graphic novel-style introduction to yoga philosophy based on The Bhagavad Gita, one of ancient India's most sacred texts. This book was published in 2019.

His next project, The Whitney Saga (published in 2022), is a book that was written by his grandfather, Ershel R. Whitney, in the early 1960s. Gary edited the manuscript, adding comments and illustrations.

A Spiritual Handbook for a Material Life, his most recent book, is a reworking of Song of the Avatar into its originally intended format (now available in both paperback and Kindle editions).