James Attlee

James Attlee is a widely published writer specialising in creative nonfiction, travel and art. His book Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey (Chicago, 2007) reveals another city to the one depicted in Brideshead or Inspector Morse and recently came out in a new edition (And Other Stories, 2020). Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (Penguin, 2011) celebrates the shapeshifting light of Earth’s nearest neighbour. James was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year for Station to Station (Guardian Books, 2015) and won the New Media Writing prize with his locative fiction app The Cartographer’s Confession (2017). In Guernica: Painting the End of the World (Head of Zeus, 2017) he explores the genesis and subsequent journeyings of Picasso’s most famous painting, while Under the Rainbow: Voices from Lockdown (And Other Stories, 2021) is a unique, first-hand report from the Covid frontline.

James’s parallel career in the publishing industry has included roles as sales and rights director of Tate Publishing in London and editor at large (UK) for the University of Chicago Press. He continues to work as a developmental editor on projects that require extensive revision and sensitive liaison with authors. His journalism has appeared in the Independent, Frieze, Apollo, and the LRB among other publications. Since 2019 he has taught on the MA Creative Writing programme at Oxford Brookes.

He lives with his family in Oxford in a small, terraced house that in earlier times was a pub. He aims to keep its hospitable atmosphere alive.