James Kilgore is a research scholar at the Center for African Studies, University of Illinois. He grew up in California, graduating from UC Santa Barbara in 1969. Deeply immersed in the political movements of the time, Kilgore became involved with the Symbionese Liberation Army, eventually fleeing a 1975 federal explosives charge. He remained on the run for twenty-seven years. During this time underground, he lived in Zimbabwe, Australia, and South Africa, working as an educator and researcher under the pseudonym John Pape. U.S. authorities caught up with him in Cape Town in 2002. After extradition to the United States, he served six and a half years in prison. While incarcerated, Kilgore wrote We Are All Zimbabweans Now, his first novel and his first publication under his own name.
