about the author
Jim Gullo has written professionally for more than twenty years as a freelance magazine writer and author of non-fiction books. “Fountain of Youth” is his first novel. Gullo’s comic voice has been displayed as the “How-to Guru” columnist for Premiere magazine, the “Video Vagabond” reviewer for the Chicago Tribune for several years; and as a columnist for Diversion and Wingspan magazines.
For magazines, he has searched northern Thailand for noodles for Saveur; chronicled the feats of Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s greatest athlete, for Sports Illustrated; played the golf courses of Scotland as a P.G. Wodehouse character for Islands; asked his butler to bring pizzas and Yoohoos to his St. Regis hotel suite for Virtuoso Travel Life; and written about Microsoft millionaires, Mexican resorts and scuba-diving in Indiana sloughs for Town & Country, Bon Appetit and Aqua, respectively. His seven published books include guidebooks to the Pacific Northwest, the autobiography of golfer Charlie Sifford, and books on southern history and Hillary Rodham Clinton for younger readers.
Prior to his career as a writer, Gullo worked as an editorial assistant at New York Magazine and a public relations executive for Walt Disney Home Video, where he helped launch the home video releases of Disney’s animated features. He worked closely with Disney veterans like Wolfgang Reitherman, who directed many of Disney’s animated features in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and Jack Kinney, who directed most of the Goofy cartoons of Disney’s heyday. Moving to Media Home Entertainment, an independent video distributor, Gullo promoted and publicized a wide range of genre movies, and staged publicity tours with the likes of Robert (“Freddy Krueger”) Englund, an experience that led to Gullo’s first magazine sale in Premiere.
Gullo grew up in Penn Yan, New York on Keuka Lake, the setting for “Fountain of Youth,” and his father was a professor at Keuka College. Gullo studied journalism and creative writing at the University of Arizona with C.E. “Buzz” Poverman, and has taken writing workshops at the Field’s End program on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he lived for several years. He now resides in McMinnville, Oregon, in the heart of Oregon's wine region with wife Kris and sons Joe and Henry; his 20-year old son Michael is a Vocal Jazz major at the University of Miami and toured in the summer of 2009 as lead vocalist for the Glenn Miller Orchestra.