Jack Zimmerman grew up on the Southwest Side of Chicago and graduated from the Chicago Conservatory of Music (trombone performance major).

He spent four years in the Navy during the Vietnam War and has worked as a college instructor, piano tuner, newspaper columnist, Ravinia PR man, and for a time was a trombone player on WGN’s “Bozo’s Circus.”

For the past 13 years, he has worked as the subscriber relations manager of Lyric Opera of Chicago.

His novel Gods of the Andes was published in 2006, and a collection of his newspaper columns, 10,000 Years in the Suburbs, was published in 1994. In 2010 he released The Gift, a collection of his stories on CD

Jack lives in Chicago with his wife, Charlene, Lyric Opera’s principal clarinetist. The Zimmermans have two grown sons.