Willcott is a former award-winning newspaper columnist and national-award-winner for geezerblockhead.com. He has published scholarship, magazine features, and the novella, A Franklin Manor Christmas.

He has been a regular contributor of commentaries and other material to North Country Public Radio. Some of them can be heard here.

He has four degrees from the University of Texas, including a Ph.D. in applied linguistics and a law degree.

He has lived in Baghdad, Amman, Tehran, London, Hong Kong, Zurich, Washington, D.C., New York, and elsewhere. In September, 2017, he and his wife Ann sold the former monastery/tuberculosis sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, where they had been living for several years. They now live in New York City.