James L. Nelson

Jim Nelson was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in motion picture/television production but, finding that despite the California sun, it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul, Jim took the cure Melville recommended and decided to sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. For six years he worked on board traditional sailing ships before realizing it would be easier to write about sailing rather than actually doing it.

Jim is the author of sixteen works of maritime fiction and history. His novel Glory in the Name was the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award for Best Military Fiction and his nonfiction George Washington's Secret Navy won the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval History. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and BookTV. He currently lives in Harpswell with his former shipmate, now wife Lisa and their four children.