Leaving London after stints with the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, John Wilcock (whose autobiography is being serialized) went first to Canada, but after a few years was in New York working for the New York Times as a travel editor. This led to 40 years of writing travel books, first for the $5-a-Day series (Japan, Greece, Mexico, India) and then writing/editing 25 books for Insight Guides as their U.S. West Coast editor.

In 1955 with Norman Mailer, Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf and Jerry Tallmer he co-founded the Village Voice for which he wrote a column for ten years, a column that still appears weekly—51 years later-- on his website, where his book is being serialized from November 2007 to Nov. 2008.

His column has appeared in Tokyo’s Mainichi News, the Toronto Daily Star, Sydney’s OZ Magazine, Penthouse and High Times. In a 3,000-word story by Saundra Sorenson in the VC Reporter (Sept. 4, 2006), its cover a portrait of Wilcock by Andy Warhol, he was described as “Mr. Underground.”

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