James Work grew up in the Fall River Valley a few miles from Estes Park, Colorado. He’s a third-generation Coloradoan: Great-Grandfather Josiah Work moved from Pennsylvania in the 1890s to take up beet farming near Fort Morgan; Grandfather James Work continued the farming there until his death, and father James married and moved to Estes Park to start a tourist lodge.

            The Works are of Scotch-Irish descent. His mother’s side of the family originated in Wales and also came to Colorado in the late 1800s, but went into commercial and mercantile trades in Leadville, Cripple Creek and Denver. All of which means that James Work speaks from a heritage strongly Anglo-Saxon and draws his inspirational nourishment from roots that are agricultural and commercial, urban and rural, mountain town and college town.

            After going to Colorado State University for two degrees and finishing a University of New Mexico Ph.D in studies of Victorian England’s literature and culture, he returned to CSU on a “temporary” teaching assignment that lasted thirty years. Around 1980 or so his literary interest shifted from the Victorian poets to Western American writers and within ten years he had published a major textbook in Western American literature and had been elected president of the Western Literature Association.

            Twenty-five years of teaching the literature of the West to college students, graduate and undergraduate alike, and he came down with a serious case of GottaWrite. From somewhere out of the blue came an idea that synchronized his Anglo-Saxon background, his expertise in British literary history and his enthusiasm for Western writing. As the GottaWrite bug dug deeper and deeper into his mental bowels he knew he had to do it: he had to try turning the old Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into an 1880 western.

            Now retired from teaching, James works at writing more western novels based upon King Arthur stories. For relaxation, he also works on a series of contemporary novels he calls “literary mysteries” in which a smarty aleck literature professor solves mysteries by calling upon his acquaintance with literary oddities.