Cliff James

Cliff James was born in Kent in 1972 and grew up in the Sussex town of Battle.  After dropping out of college at 18, he went to live in a monastery on the South Downs for a year – an experience which inspired the dark themes of his first novel. 

After leaving the monastery, he lived in Cambridge with his first boyfriend, a trainee Anglican priest, before moving onto Sunderland University in 1994.  Cliff graduated with a First Class degree in English Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Sunderland, where he was also awarded the prestigious Raman Selden Memorial Prize for English Literature.

By 2000, Cliff had rejected his earlier religious faith for a commitment to humanism and human rights.  He worked for six years as a legal representative for asylum seekers with the Refugee Legal Centre at a detention centre near Cambridge, where he represented hundreds of people who were fleeing persecution. 

In 2006, he became Secretary of the international human rights group, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, where he campaigned against the persecution of gay people and humanists around the world.
After training as a journalist, Cliff became the News Editor of the national gay lifestyle magazine, 3SIXTY, and the Editor of the Brighton-based LGBT newspaper one80news.  He regularly wrote for the humanist magazine, Gay Humanist Quarterly.

His first published short story, The Violence of the Gardener, appeared in A Casualty of War: The Arcadia Book of Gay Short Stories in 2008.  He has had poems published in various publications and is now a performance poet at live literature events across the north of England.  His first novel, Of Bodies Changed, was published in June 2014.  He now lives in Calderdale with his partner and two cats, and is working on his next novel.

Website? www.cliffjames.net

Twitter? @cliffjamester

Facebook? www.facebook.com/cliffjamester

Bibliography:
Short story: ‘The Violence of the Gardener’ in ‘A Casualty of War: The Arcadia Book of Short Stories’ (Published in 2008 by Arcadia).
Novel: ‘Of Bodies Changed’ (Published in June 2014 with FeedARead).

Synopses:
Of Bodies Changed: When Jackie travels to the South Downs in search of her childhood home, she uncovers a sinister secret lurking in the family closet. Her estranged brother, Chris, is her last remaining relative, but he has been transformed into something unrecognisable by the ghosts of the past.
In her journey to discover the truth, Jackie enters a strange world of free-loving heathens, environmental warriors and sadistic priests, where dragons dwell beneath the streets of northern towns and demons prowl on the edge of Avebury’s stone circle. A gothic tale of love, revenge and atonement,
Of Bodies Changed is an odyssey through the ancient myths that illustrate the human experience.

Awards & Prizes: The Raman Selden Memorial Prize for English Literature

Literary Festival Appearances: December 2014 at the artSBridge Festival (Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire).

Contact email: [cliffjamester[@]gmail.com] - (remove brackets for email)
Contact telephone? 07967047422