Jake Svercek is the nom de guerre of Skyler Kanegi, a business and psychology student at the University of Texas at Austin. Having lived internationally from a young age, Jake is fluent in Spanish and Chinese, with knowledge of Latin, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Taiwanese as well. He considers himself an explorer and hopes to do a lot of travelling after graduating from university.

Jake has been an avid reader since learning to speak English at the age of eight, but he didn't start writing poetry until he was twelve, when he attempted to enter a national poetry contest to win the prize money. This did not go exactly as planned, but it helped expose him to more poetry. From there, he expanded into short stories, novels, and, later, plays and screenplays.

Jake is one of the founders of Boost Theatre, a nonprofit theatre and troupe in Austin, TX, that encourages people to immerse themselves in the arts. He has worked with Living Art Studio Theatre (LAST), which is run by hal evans, an influential actor, playwright, and director. Under hal's guidance, Jake wrote six plays and directed two of them for Speed Theater, which challenges playwrights, directors, and actors to produce a short play in a single day.

Jake has also won numerous art and writing competitions at the state and national levels, including the prestigious Scholastic Gold Key, and he was a semi-finalist in the Alley Theatre's Houston Young Playwrights Exchange (HYPE). Outside of literature, Jake is an accomplished pianist and guitarist who has composed music of his own.