Born in Ohio, raised in Illinois, and higher-ed-ed in Michigan, Iowa, and Oregon, D. R. James now lives in the woods east of Saugatuck, Michigan, with his wife, psychotherapist Suzy Doyle. Between them they have six adult children as well as seven grandchildren, and they enjoy cycling the backroads skirting Lake Michigan. During his 45 years as an educator, James spent 37 of them teaching writing, literature, and peace studies, and coaching students on "doing college," at small, liberal arts Hope College. He earned an MA in English at the University of Iowa and an MFA in Poetry at Pacific University (Oregon). His nine previous collections include the books Since Everything Is All I've Got (March Street Press, 2011) and If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017) and the chapbooks Why War and Split-Level (Finishing Line Press, 2014, 2017), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box, 2019) and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2020). His micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. Arriving relatively late on the poetry scene (just shy of 50), he has since published individual poems in many and a wide variety of print and online journals and anthologies.