James Buchanan's Biography

James Buchanan is a 46-year-old writer living in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire with his two young children-Quincy and Violet and their leopard gecko Spotty.

Born in 1965 in Philadelphia, James attended Quaker schools throughout the elementary and high school grades as an employment benefit to his father and mother who taught at Wilmington Friends School and Westtown Friends School respectively.

He graduated from Westtown in 1984 and entered Keene State College in New Hampshire the following fall. However, during that summer James traveled with a friend via bus from Philadelphia to San Francisco, which sparked a lifelong love for travel centered in work and experiencing the vibrancy and diversity of American culture.

After only a semester at Keene State James left college to continue exploring the U.S. by living in numerous locals across the country and taking a number of jobs such as tulip bulb harvesting, night snowmaking, sawyer, vineyard and winery worker, construction, cooking and on and on. These life experiences as well as the education he received from the two Quaker schools he attended have served to inform his writing in unique and important ways. In fact, many of the stories in "Selling Their Childhood"--his collection of short stories--come directly from those experiences.

In 1991, James finally returned to college at the State University of New Paltz where he intended on following through on his lifelong love for writing by majoring in Creative Writing. However, questioning the practicality of such a major and the expense of it he soon changed his major to Political Science. During college James relied on his job skills to support himself and worked seven days-per-week during the school semesters and then six days-per-week during summer breaks.

Thrilled to be free of college after graduating in 1995 and feeling a bit disconnected from his more adventurous past, James moved to northern New Hampshire where he worked as a cook, night snowmaker, and sawyer and just generally enjoyed life with his friends skiing, hiking, playing guitar and just generally living in and among the White Mountains.

Before long, though, James began to yearn for something more and started writing for the local newspaper, which sparked a desire to become a journalist and finally act on his long held desire to write. He soon moved to the southern part of the state and worked for two newspapers writing alternately on politics, social issues and the various personalities he came in contact with.

His career was given a significant boost when he was asked by The MIT Press to ghost write a book on Internet governance issues. He has since written on numerous technology issues as well as a number of social issues.

His writing continues to receive high praise and includes a diversity of styles and subjects. In particular, James is working on a book based on interviews he has conducted with the surviving members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and a memoir based on the year he spent being treated for cancer.