John Gilmore

John Gilmore was born and educated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and trained as a journalist and later as an English language teacher in Great Britain. He has worked as a newsroom editor at The Montreal Gazette, The Canadian Press news agency, and Radio Canada International. He has also taught English as a Second Language in England and Canada.

John's primary research into Canadian jazz history has been published in two critically-acclaimed books: Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal has been republished in a second edition (2011), and is available at Lulu.com. It is also available in French translation as Une histoire du jazz a Montreal, with a preface by Gilles Archambault. Books in Canada called Swinging in Paradise "a hallelujah of a book... that leaves you searching for superlatives." John has also written a companion reference book called Who's Who of Jazz in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970. John's jazz history research materials, including oral history recordings with musicians, are collected at Concordia University Archives, in Montreal.

His latest book, Head of a Man, is a poetic narrative described by award-winning Canadian poet Gary Geddes as a "spare, lean gem of a novel, so lyrical and evocative its brief prose fragments get into your head and stay there."

He has also translated a novel by award-winning Quebec film director Bernard Emond, titled 8:17 PM, rue Darling. The novel became Emond's second feature film.