About
We are the decisions we make for good or bad. Everything we do is a valuable experience worth telling ourselves or others.
I am a British writer with Chilean ancestry. I have been writing all my life here and there but only recently decided to make it my full-time passion as I believe everyone has a story worth telling.
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Here is my story so far...
About James
I grew up in the United Kingdom, reading fantasy and science fiction from books by JRR Tolkien, along with the Star Wars book series by Timothy Zahn. I used to draw maps and write histories of fictional worlds I shared with my brother. Video games such as The Legend of Zelda series inspired me to integrate the hero character into these fantastical worlds, which would always be full of romance, danger, and adventure.
​When I graduated from secondary school, I went on to college and moved to downtown Bristol. At 19 years old, I decided to take a chance and move to Chile, where I could learn more about my Chilean heritage from my mother’s family and begin my own hero’s journey.
I learned Spanish and embraced the country’s Spanish and indigenous multicultural traditions. I first taught English as a foreign language as a private tutor in Santiago, then at a primary school where I rewrote their syllabus and wrote my own English textbook, English Made Easy, which I later self-published. I went on to teach at the university, La Universidad Finis Terrae. I set up my own school, Talk English.
It was as an English teacher that I began to delve deeper into the language.
I rediscovered my writing under the mentorship of Alejandra Basualto - a Chilean poet. We read various Latin American writers such as Gabriela Mistral, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Luis Fernando Verissimo, and many more. We would write a similar piece inspired by these writers and present it to the writers’ group the following week. I had two stories published as part of an anthology, Reflejos Antologia and received an honorary mention by the Departamento de Cultura del Colegio Cirujano Dentistas for a poem titled ‘Ojos hostiles’.
Although I will always cherish my time in Chile as the place where I discovered my passion for writing, I decided to return to the United Kingdom and take my writing further.
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I moved to Bath and joined the Bath Writers group, Beyond the Margins, hosted by local writers and poets to critique and provide feedback on each other’s writing.
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I attended the School of Myth, led by Dr Martin Shaw in Dartmoor, where I delved into the depth of storytelling through emotive tales and learned the importance of initiation.
I studied for a bachelor’s degree in English Literature with Creative Writing online through Open University. I enjoyed examining the variety of writers and their unique voices, especially TS Elliot’s Four Quartets and the more contemporary Jhumpa Lahiri, whose short stories on diaspora made me relate to my joint heritage of Chile and England. I experimented with different techniques to develop my writing, from short stories, poetry, scripts and novels.
My story continues after half a year away in Chile to rediscover my creativity and my voice with the start of my Master's Degree at Bath Spa University...