Joe (Giuseppe) Costanzo was born in Pedivigliano, a town in the mountains of Calabria in Southern Italy. He emigrated to America with his family in 1954, sailing aboard the ill-fated Andrea Doria.

Calabrian immigrants in Salt Lake City.
      At the age of 19, while still attending the University of Utah, Joe landed a fulltime job as a reporter with the Deseret News, one of the daily newspapers in town, and that same year won his first national news writing award for his coverage of an airline hijacking
       After graduating with a B.A. degree, he spent months traveling throughout Italy, particularly Calabria, and then returned to America to resume his career in journalism.
      Over the next twenty-five years, Joe covered some of the biggest news stories in the West, including the execution of Gary Gilmore, and won numerous regional and national awards for his reporting and news writing, including recognition from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Associated Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
     A member of the Italian American Writers Association, he has written extensively about crime and justice, the environment, animal rights, natural calamities, religion, the Italian-American experience, and many other subjects that served him well in the writing of his novels, Graphic Times and Restoration. When he is not writing, Joe is reading, biking, hiking, restoring classic British roadsters, and otherwise pursuing a contemplative lifestyle.