James Reich is a novelist, essayist, and journalist, and ecopsychologist. He is the author of The Moth for the Star (7.13 Books, September 2023), The Song My Enemies Sing, Soft Invasions, Mistah Kurtz! A Prelude to Heart of Darkness (Anti-Oedipus Press), I, Judas, and Bombshell (Counterpoint/Soft Skull). His psychoanalytic monograph Wilhelm Reich versus The Flying Saucers is forthcoming from Punctum Books. He is also the author of The Holly King, a limited-edition collection of poetry. His novels have been studied at North American and European universities.
James and his work have been published and commissioned by Literary Hub, SPIN Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, CrimeReads, Salon, Huffington Post, National Book Review, Vol.1 Brooklyn, The Rumpus, International Times, Sensitive Skin Magazine, Entropy, Fiction Advocate, The Weeklings, The Nervous Breakdown, Heavy Feather Review, Poet Republik, Largehearted Boy, Sleeping Fish / Calamari Press, Shelf Awareness, Full Stop, and others.
Of Reich’s introduction to Barry N. Malzberg’s Campbell Award-winning novel Beyond Apollo, Malzberg stated: “If only all my readers were as attentive as you.”
His account of innovations in British science fiction is published by Bloomsbury in its ‘Decades’ series, The 1960s. His work has also appeared in several editions of Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology, Akashic Books’ ‘Noir’ series, and various anthologies of fiction and criticism.
James was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire in the West of England, and has been a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2009. He was greatly influenced by early exposure to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, and by a small book on dadaism, and later by Andy Warhol, the Beats, science fiction, psychoanalysis, punk rock, and the films of Ken Russell and Nic Roeg. Norman Mailer, Sylvia Plath, J.G. Ballard, Anne Sexton, Paul Bowles, D.H. Lawrence, and Lars von Trier are also vital constellations in his work.
Between 2011 and 2021 James taught and developed undergraduate, baccalaureate, and high school classes in writing, literature, philosophy, and liberal arts. He served as Chair of Creative Writing and Literature at both Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and New Mexico School for the Arts. He holds a BA Hons. degree in English Literature with the History of Art from Manchester Metropolitan University and a MA in Ecopsychology from Naropa University in Boulder, CO. In 2015, he founded Stalking Horse Press, a critically acclaimed independent small publisher of fiction and poetry.
Most recently, he has co-written a screenplay for a film in pre-production, and is working on freelance writing, editing, and book design projects. His second science fiction novel, Skinship, is due to be published in 2024 by Anti-Oedipus Press.