Thursday, December 6, 2007
7 PM

Maine Author
James Nelson

            Author James L. Nelson was born in Lewiston, Maine. His  interest in ships and the sea began early, reading Hornblower and building ship models. In high school Nelson built a fifteen foot sailboat, and with a friend, an eighteen foot canoe.

            Nelson graduated from Lewiston High School in 1980. After a year of  hitchhiking and motorcycling around the country, he attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, later transferring to UCLA Film School, from which he graduated in 1986. After working in the television industry for two years, Nelson realized that he could not stand a) the television industry, b) Los Angeles and c) being ashore. In 1988 he joined the crew of the Golden Hinde (rhymes with mind), a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s vessel of 1577. Leaving the Hinde in Houston, Texas, he worked aboard the brig Lady Washington and the ship “HMS” Rose, which he sailed aboard for two years, as Able Bodied Seaman and Third Mate.

            In 1993, Nelson “swallowed the anchor” and married Lisa Page, a former shipmate aboard the Golden Hinde. The following year he finished By Force of Arms, his first book. Nelson has been a full-time writer since then, with fifteen works of both fiction and non-fiction either published or in the process of being published. His books have sold in the United States, The United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. Nelson’s 2003 title Glory in the Name was selected as the winner of the American Library Association’s W.Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction.  James and Lisa now live in Harpswell, Maine, with their four children.

    For more information visit www.jameslnelson.com.