Gary Tillery
AUTHOR

Gary Tillery

Biographies & Memoirs | Arts & Entertainment
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I've been a writer all my life, working in both nonfiction and fiction. My fascination with "the intellectual Beatle," John Lennon, led me to write The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon. The book was published by Quest Books in 2009 and has been translated into German, French, Portuguese, and Danish. It was named the Official Book of the 2010 John Lennon Tribute in New York City. In 2011, I followed up its success with a study of "the quiet Beatle," titled Working Class Mystic: A Spiritual Biography of George Harrison. In 2013 I added a third book in the "Spiritual Biography" series, The Seeker King, focusing on Elvis Presley. And in 2023 I published Uncommon Faith, a similar examination of the life of Barack Obama. Fiction-wise, I've chronicled the adventures of "soft-boiled" detective Jack Savage in three comic novels -- Death, Be Not Loud, To an Aesthete Dying Young, and She Stalks in Beauty. (Poor Jack, perpetually a square peg in a world of round holes.) I have also published three novels in a more literary vein: For all of my adult life I have had a fascination with Jesus--not as a religious icon, but as a figure of history. Yeshua, My Beloved integrates over thirty years of research. I subtitle it "A Fact-Based Gospel According to Mary Magdalene." Very little is known about Mary, so her story is fiction, but her narrative of the ministry of Jesus is as fact-oriented and historically accurate as modern scholarship can make it, and holds a number of surprises for people who have never looked past the common perception of him. (Did you know that he had four brothers?--and that three were likely members of his twelve apostles? Did you know that ancient sources allege that his real father was a Roman soldier named Pantera?) I served in Vietnam in 1968-69. My novel of the war, Darkling Plain, is composed of interlinked short stories--some based on my own experiences, some coming from my imagination, and some of which I heard while I served there. The book examines the impact of America's most traumatic war on a young airman. The Roots of the Wind, set in Congo, interweaves the stories of a troubled man devastated by personal tragedy, a woman with eerily accurate premonitions of human fossils being excavated, and a poignant mystery from a quarter-of-a-million years ago. Background details are taken from an archaeological expedition in which I took part. I have also published poetry -- Through a Dark, Glassly, as well as a collection of haiku titled 50 Epiphanies. In 2014, to commemorate a century of baseball at the Chicago Cubs' ballpark, Wrigley Field, I published The Ghosts of Wrigley Field. It recounts, in poetic form, some of the memorable events that have taken place in the legend-filled stadium. I will shortly be publishing a new collection of poems, On the Road to Tangier. I am a native of the Southwest, born in Phoenix. After serving in Vietnam with the U. S. Air Force, I returned to Arizona for a Bachelor's degree in Latin American Studies from Arizona State University and a Master's degree from Thunderbird School of Global Management. After two decades in the business world, primarily as co-owner of an advertising agency in suburban Chicago, I refocused my time and energy on my lifelong passion for literature and art. I am also a professional artist, a member of the Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt Amrany. My most prominent works are the centerpiece sculpture for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Chicago and the American Legion Veterans Memorial in Lake Forest, Illinois. I also created the sculpture of Johnny Appleseed in Fort Wayne, Indiana (where he died in 1845), co-sculpted the statue of Pat Tillman for the Arizona Cardinals, and have displayed in galleries from Pennsylvania to New Mexico and appeared in shows as far away as Shanghai. My works are in the private collections of Patricia DuPont and General Tommy Franks, and the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago holds two pieces in its permanent collection.
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