Gary Tillery was born in Phoenix in 1947. The son of a millwright who left school after the fourth
grade to help on his family’s farm, Tillery returned to Arizona after service in Vietnam to earn a
bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in international business.

During a 20-year career in advertising, Tillery had an abiding love for literature and art. In
1996 he left the business world behind to devote his energy to writing and sculpture.

In 2009 Quest Books published The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon.
This was the first book to focus on Lennon as a man of ideas rather than as an icon of popular
culture. By examining his lyrics, writings, and many published interviews, the book mapped
out the secular and idealistic philosophy behind such popular hits as “Revolution,”
“Give Peace a Chance,” “Instant Karma,” and Lennon’s masterpiece, “Imagine.”
An early draft of the book was distilled into “The Philosophy of John Lennon”
—an article for Philosophy Now magazine.

The Cynical Idealist became one of Quest’s best-selling titles, and was selected as the official
book of the 30th Annual John Lennon tribute in 2010, the only Lennon tribute to have the
endorsement of Yoko Ono. A similar study of George Harrison—Working-Class Mystic
—will be published by Quest in November 2011.

Tillery has also published Darkling Plain, a collection of interrelated short stories that chronicle
one American’s tour of duty during the Vietnam War. (One story, “Dragon with a Broken Wing,”
won a First Prize award personally presented by Ray Bradbury.) Tillery is also the author of
Death, Be Not Loud and To an Aesthete Dying Young, the first two books in a series of humorous
novels featuring “soft-boiled” detective Jack Savage.