How it started
Jim’s passion for autobiography began in fifth grade, when he first read From Ghetto to Glory by the St. Louis Cardinals’ pitcher Bob Gibson, and it has shaped his teaching, scholarship, and writing ever since. As a professor at the University of Virginia, he teaches memoir as both literature and craft, guiding students in composing personal narratives while studying how memoirs of loss and grief help us confront truths our culture often avoids. That interest ultimately led Jim to write Fragments of a Father, a book born from his attempt to uncover the life of his father, who died in a plane crash when he was a child—a story that’s as much about the search itself as it is about what he discovered. An award-winning teacher, Jim has taught thousands of students, directed writing programs at UVA, the University of Pittsburgh, and Long Island University, and published widely on writing pedagogy, giving workshops and lectures at universities and schools across the country.
About Jim
Education
Jim earned his Ph.D. in English, with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition, from New York University. Before that, he completed an M.A. in English at the University of New Mexico and a B.A. in English, magna cum laude, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Academic and Administrative Career
Jim is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 2013 and also served as Director of the Writing and Rhetoric Program from 2013–2019. Prior to that, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Composition Program and the College Writing Board. He began his faculty career at Long Island University, Brooklyn, where he served as Assistant Professor of English and directed both the Writing Program and the English as a Second Language Program.
Honors and Awards
Jim’s teaching and scholarship have been recognized with numerous awards and grants at UVA, including the Dean’s Mead Endowment Dream Idea Program (2024–2025), a College Fellow appointment in the UVA Engagements Program (2022–2024), and the Richard A. and Sarah Page Mayo Distinguished Teaching Professorship, co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (2016–2019). Earlier honors include the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the David and Tina Bellet Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a prestigious appointment as a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Over the course of his career, he has received multiple competitive grants supporting his innovative research and teaching.
