Austin Schwartz graduated from Niles North High School in 1995. He earned his bachelor's at Southern Illinois University and doctorate at National Louis University in School Psychology. He was Living in Lincoln Square, Chicago for eight years before accepting a position in Alaska with the Anchorage School District. Soon thereafter, he created a storytelling project following the past life a fictional character named Flint Grove (1977-2013). The Flint Grove Storytelling Project utilizes a series of bumper stickers to tell his story. These stickers were left in different places around town--on bulletin boards, tip jars, and in books at local used book shops.

This project recently caught the eye of Julia O'Malley, who is a columnist with Anchorage Daily News. In O'Malley's article, Flint Grove Was Here, she stated, The more quotes I read, the more Flint Grove seemed familiar. He was a type of person I'd met a dozen times. A 20-something from Texas or New York or Ohio, up here looking for adventure and following a desire to escape the conventional. He was that friend of a friend, just passing through, who you might meet because he showed up to your barbecue empty-handed with his dog. Later, he'd ask if it was cool to pitch his tent in your back yard. And maybe you'd let him, because in a way you admired his ability to hustle through life with so little weighing him down."