James Wilson was born in 1948, and brought up near Cambridge,
England. After attending a small village school, run by an
eccentric but brilliant teacher who fired his enthusiasm for
history and stories, he was educated first at a 'progressive'
boarding school (which he hated); then at Cambridgeshire College of
Arts and Technology (which he loved); and finally at Worcester
College, Oxford, where he read History. While still at Oxford he
wrote his first attempt at a novel (now mercifully lost), and began
to develop his deep interest in native north American history and
culture. After working variously as a clerk at Oxfam, an English
teacher, and an assistant in a children's home in London-all the
while trying to write fiction, and researching his historical
interests-in 1973 James persuaded the Minority Rights Group in
London to commission him to produce a report on the native people
of Canada. This project involved an extensive trip to indigenous
communities from Quebec to Alberta, and led to the offer of a Ford
Foundation grant to research and write a companion piece on the
Indians of the United States, which was published in 1976. In the
same year, at the invitation of the Canadian National Indian
Brotherhood, James attended the first World Congress of Indigenous
Peoples on Vancouver Island. From 1976 to 1990, James was Director
of Studies at the British and European Studies Group, an
academically-intensive programme for US undergraduates in London.
He continued to write during this period-producing articles, new
editions of his MRG reports, and several plays-and remained active
in native North American issues through his involvement with
Survival International, a London-based charity campaigning for
tribal peoples' rights, for which he served (and still serves) as a
board-member and consultant. In 1989, James was asked to act as
consultant for a British TV film, Hunters and Bombers (dir.
Hugh Brody, Channel 4, 1990; winner of the Mannheim Festival Best
Documentary Award), about the Innu people of north-eastern Canada,
which involved an eye-opening trip to Labrador. A year later, he
was commissioned as consultant and scriptwriter for a two-part BBC
documentary, Savagery and the American Indian (producer Ken
Kirby; BBC2 and A&E Network, 1991; winner of a National
Education Association Award, 1992), travelling widely in the United
States to interview historians and visit reservation communities.
The same year, he left his job in London and moved with his wife
and two sons to Bristol to pursue his writing full-time. During the
early 1990's, James made another extended research trip to North
America and worked on several more TV projects, including The
Two Worlds of the Innu (BBC2, 1994), for which he acted as
Associate Producer. He also continued to write plays-two of which,
Let's Do It and Rough Music, were produced in
Bristol. At the same time, he began work on The Earth Shall
Weep-the distillation of his twenty-year experience of
researching, thinking and talking about Native American
history-which was published by Picador in the United Kingdom (1998)
and by Grove/Atlantic in the United States (1999), where it
received a Myers Outstanding Book Award in 2000. The Earth Shall
Weep has also been (or is being) translated into Swedish,
German and French. The Dark Clue continues James' passion
for historical storytelling-and finally returns him to his first
love, fiction. It springs from a long-standing fascination with
J.M.W. Turner and the disturbing ambiguities surrounding his work
and reputation. It was published by Faber in the United Kingdom and
by Grove/Atlantic in the United States, and has also been sold to
Canada, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and Catalonia.
James is currently working on a second novel, The Bastard
Boy, set on the eve of the American Revolution, which has been
commissioned by Faber and is due for delivery in early 2003.