Pacific Cruise to the Marquesas, Fakarava, Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji. In 1998 he served as a Smithsonian Lecturer for the Cunard Lines' South In 1993 he was invited to Okinawa to lecture at the University of the Ryukyus. His alma mater, now San Jose State University, to hold the prestigious LurieĬhair, as Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing.Ī frequent visitor to Hawai'i, he has traveled widely in the Pacific Basin. The University of Hawai'i, the University of Oregon, the University of Michigan,Īnd George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. L969, after teaching for a year at Stanford, he began teaching writing part-timeĪt the University of California's Santa Cruz campus, an arrangement thatĬontinued for over twenty years, interspersed with visits to such campuses as Guitar, and playing acoustic bass in a piano bar and in a bluegrass band.

Several years he made his living as a musician, teaching classical and folk Since 1962 he and Jeanne have lived in Santa Cruz, within view of Montereyīay, where they raised their three children, Corinne, Joshua and Gabrielle. Gig, which won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction. While there he sold his first novel and completed his second, Four years later he returned to Stanford as a Stegner Writing Fellow. Irving Howe, editor Malcolm Cowley, and the Irish short story master, Frank Scotland, Scandinavia, and the Soviet Union - he returned home to pursue an M.A. Air ForceĪfter traveling extensively in Europe - to Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Another early effort won that year's U.S. In 1959 his first published story appeared in the London Jim and Jeanne were married in Honolulu in 1957, and from there moved toĮngland while he served for three years as Information Officer with a Tacticalįighter-Bomber Wing. Point, he has been able to look both ways, eastward across the continent, andįarther west, toward the shores and islands of the Asia/Pacific region. Personal life, these histories have intermingled. Opposite direction, crossing the ocean from Japan. Studied drama and met Jeanne, whose parents had reached California from the

He was born in San Francisco, where his parents settled after migrating westįrom Texas during the Depression of the l930s.

Wife, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston - a true account of her family's experience duringĪnd after the World War Two internment, it is in a 67th printing from Bantamīooks and a standard work in schools and colleges across the country. His non-fiction works includeįarewell to Manzanar, co-authored with his Houston is the author of eight novels, including Bird of Another

Continental Drift by James D. Houston