Giò Barbieri lives and works in Modena. After graduating from the Accademia d’Arte in Florence, in the ‘70s he worked with Bonvi (Franco Bonvicini, creator of the comic strip Sturmtruppen) and Silver (Guido Silvestri, creator of Lupo Alberto) at the publisher Plycomics, piloted tourist aircraft, sailed extensively, and was a war photographer for the weekly L’Europeo. A tireless traveller and passionate ethnologist, in 1982 he figured in the Guinness Book of Records as the individual to have visited the greatest number of countries, and in 2004 his son of just 20 months was listed in this same book as “the youngest traveller to have visited all seven continents”. Since 1994 he has authored tourist guides for Fuori Thema-Rough Giude, Vallardi and Polaris, travel stories and books, directed the travel section of the illustrated periodical Terra e Identità, written a personal column for the Wall Street International Magazine and been a long-established contributor to the travel magazine Caravan & Camper, for which he writes articles and news reports.

Books published by FuoriThema/Rough Guide: Borneo (2001); Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei; Kalimantan Indonesia; Kalimantan Timur (2002); Malaysia Orientale; Dayakland (2003), A complete guidebooks on the island of Borneo, with an in-depth description of the populations and ethnicities, history, multi-ethnic cuisine, religions, arts, languages, maps, and cultures of the third largest island in the world. Created for independent travel, complete with itineraries, trekking, river transport, guide recruitment, cultural contexts, cities, villages, accommodation, parks, shopping, day and night markets and much more.

Other books published: In 2010 he published the complete reproduction of the diaries of the trip to Bali in the volume Modena-Bali-Modena (Colombini) which was followed in 2014 by the story of that mythical experience, relived and narrated forty years later in the volume Modena-Bali-Modena 2 (Colombini). In 2012 the book guide of West Malaysia and Singapore was released (Polaris). In 2013, 2015 and 2019 he published Modenessere (1, 2 and 3), Portrait of the Modena universe (Colombini). In 2015 he edited the volume Adriano Malavasi, poesia è quel che rimane (Colombini). The book Modena-CapeTown-Modena, a tour of Africa with makeshift vehicles, 10 months of the unexpected experienced in 1979 and told today day by day, is nearing completion.