Jerry Holkins
American writer
Jerry Holkins (born Keith Gerald Parkinson on February 6, 1976) is an American writer. He is the co-creator and writer of the webcomic Penny Arcade along with its artist Mike Krahulik. Holkins sometimes uses the pseudonym "Tycho Brahe", which is also the name of a Penny Arcade character based on Holkins.
Holkins is a co-founder of PAX (originally called the Penny Arcade Expo) a series of gaming festivals that began in 2004 and has been held around the world. He is also a co-founder of Child's Play, a multimillion-dollar charity which organizes toy drives for children's hospitals.
Holkins, along with Krahulik, was included in the Time 100 for 2010.
Early life
Holkins was born in Auburn, Washington and grew up at least partly in Spokane, Washington. He met future collaborator Mike Krahulik at Mead High School, Spokane in 1993 or 1994 through the school newspaper, where they became friends. After graduating high school, Holkins and Krahulik shared an apartment together. Holkins moved to Seattle around 2000.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jerry Holkins” is american writer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jerry, Holkins and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american writer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15077926. VIAF identifies the subject as 36306681. The Library of Congress control number is n2004044383. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 2004, 2010 and 1993.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Jerry Holkins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.