Between the 1960s to 2000s, Gilkerson wrote over ten books including Pirate's Passage, which won the 2006 Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature.
Outside of literature, Gilkerson was an editor at the St. Louis Magazine in 1964 and held multiple jobs at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1964 to 1970.
On 25 July 1936, Gilkerson was born in Chicago, Illinois and primarily grew up in Midwestern United States.
After serving in the United States Marine Corps as a teenager, Gilkerson attended an art program at Washington University in St. Louis during the early 1960s.
[3] In between the publication of his first two books, Gilkerson edited St. Louis Magazine in 1964 and held multiple positions from 1964 to 1970 for the San Francisco Chronicle.