John Gilmore
John Gilmore was born and educated in Montreal, and trained as a journalist and later as an English language teacher in the UK. He has worked as a newsroom editor at The Montreal Gazette, The Canadian Press news agency, and Radio Canada International, and as an English language teacher in England, Canada and Brazil. He has also worked as a music programmer at CBC Radio, an editor at The Banff Centre for the Arts, and an instructor at Concordia University, Montreal. He now works as a freelance writer, translator, and editor.
John's ground-breaking research into Montreal jazz history was published in two critically-acclaimed books, Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal and Who’s Who of Jazz in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970. His research materials, including oral history recordings with musicians, are part of the jazz history research collections at Concordia University Archives.
John also writes and translates fiction and poetic narrative, and continues to explore new ways of telling story.
He is an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Story-telling at Concordia University, Montreal.
“Sometimes it is given to us. One moment of clarity. One word laid down, cold and clattering, beside another. Ribbon of wet stone.”