James Irwin is a writer & editor, media artist, lecturer, and organizational communication expert. Calvin Ahlgren of the San Francisco Chronicle once described him as “breezing into rooms with calm eyes wide.” Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times once wrote that he is “witty and ingenious.” The critic Michael Fox, writing in Film Month, agreed that James has “mischievous wit,” though he found his humor “dark.”
Since 2023 James has been focused on writing fiction and creative non-fiction. His work began appearing in literary journals in 2024, including Brevity, Big Windows Review, and Bay to Ocean Journal. He is querying a novel.
Previously James published articles on film, culture, and the arts in dozens of publications, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Anima, Spiral Magazine, Artweek, and Shift Magazine. He is associate editor of the Atlantic Journal of Communication, a co-founder and contributor to the film journal Cinematograph, and founding film editor of the short-lived weekly tabloid Steel City Star in Pittsburgh.
James speaks at conferences, festivals, and events throughout the United States and beyond. These include the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Schering-Plough Executive Lecture Series at Fairleigh Dickinson University, HippoCamp Writers Conference, New Jersey Communication Association, Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, San Francisco International Film Festival, Public Relations Society of America, and others.
He has exhibited his media work throughout North America, as well as in South America and Europe. The art critic Will Torphy compared his films to the work of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. James taught film and communication at universities on both coasts of the United States, including University of California Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Montclair State University, and Ramapo College, among others. He currently teaches a course on disability representation in media and literature at Wm. Paterson University.
His film and writing work earned awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gotham Writers Workshop, Rockefeller Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and American Film Institute.
James held leadership positions in national and international marketing communication with media giant Comcast and Big Four business services firms Deloitte and EY (previously Ernst & Young), and was principal of a boutique marketing and public relations consultancy in San Francisco. His work earned awards from the Jersey Shore Public Relations & Advertising Association, Ziff-Davis Publishing, USA Today, and Ernst & Young.
He served on boards of non-profit organizations in California and New Jersey, including the Executive Board of film distributor Canyon Cinema Foundation, Program Advisory Committee for the IABC 2019 World Conference, Advisory Board of the Master’s Program in Corporate & Organizational Communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Executive Board of the New Jersey Communication Association (which he also co-founded).
A baseball player as a kid, James made walking-around money as a tennis pro in New York, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. He was also an avid player of racquetball, basketball, and softball. All of this eventually earned him a new titanium knee.
James was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, up the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia. Since the early 1990s he’s lived in northern New Jersey with his wife, Jill.