Jo Durden Smith was a reporter, researcher, then producer-director at Granada TV and an executive-producer at Alan King Associates in London. He then left for North America to take up a career as a freelance writer, contributing to well-established journals such as The Village Voice in the United States and Macleans in Canada. Jo has continued to write for magazines and newspapers in Canada, the United States, Britain and Russia. He is also the author of a number of books (Sex and the Brain with Diane de Simone, A Long-Shot Romance, The Essence of Buddhism, Mafia: The Complete History of a Criminal World) and a maker of documentaries for TV.