James Plath
James Plath has a broad background as a writer, editor, teacher, and scholar. He has published poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, reviews, celebrity interviews, and literary criticism. His involvement in the literary scene is just as broad. He’s served on the literature panel of the Illinois Arts Council and Indiana Arts Commission, he directed the Hemingway Days Writers’ Workshop & Conference in Key West for ten years, he’s served as a contest judge for both poetry and fiction, and he published the award-winning Clockwatch Review (a journal of the arts) for 16 years.
A former Fulbright teaching scholar at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, Plath is a frequent speaker and occasional keynoter at writers conferences, schools, and universities. He is currently R. Forrest Colwell Endowed Chair and a professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, and also president of The John Updike Society, which owns and operates The John Updike Childhood Home as a museum in Shillington, PA.
Books
Critical Insights: Conspiracies. Ed. with introduction. Salem Press, 2020.
The 100 Greatest Literary Characters. With Gail Sinclair and Kirk Curnutt. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
Everything Shapes Itself to the Sea, poems. Finishing Line Press, 2017.
John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews. Ed. with introduction/conclusion. Lehigh Univ. Press, 2016.
Critical Insights Film: Casablanca. Edited with introduction/contributions. Salem Press, 2020.
Critical Insights: Raymond Carver. Edited with introduction/contributions. Salem Press, 2013.
Historic Photos of Ernest Hemingway. Turner Publishing Co., 2009.
Remembering Ernest Hemingway. With Frank Simons. The Ketch & Yawl Press, 1999.
Conversations with John Updike. Edited with introduction/contribution. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Courbet, on the Rocks, poems. White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994.
Select Anthologies
“Walt Disney’s Tonka: Another Casualty of Little Bighorn?” Forgotten Disney. Ed. Kathy Merlock
Jackson, Carl Sederholm, and Mark I. West. McFarland Books, 2023.
“One True Sentence: ‘Big Two-Hearted River’—James Plath.” One True Sentence: Writers & Readers on Hemingway’s Art. Ed. Mark Cirano and Michael Von Cannon. David R. Godine, 2022.
“Santiago Goes Hollywood: The Old Man and the Sea and the 1958 Screen Adaptation.” Critical Insights: The Old Man and the Sea. Ed. Robert Evans. Salem Press, 2022.
“Pearls, Marlin, and Small Tragedies: Steinbeck’s The Pearl and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.” Critical Insights: John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. Ed. Laura Nicosia and James Nicosia. Salem Press, 2019.
“Walt Disney (1901-1966): When You Wish Upon a Star.” Shapers of American Childhood: Essays on Visionaries from L. Frank Baum to Dr. Spock to J.K. Rowling. Ed. Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark West. McFarland Books, 2018.
“Photos and Portraits.” Hemingway in Context. Ed. Suzanne del Gizzo and Debra Moddelmog. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012.
“Plattdeutsch.” City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. Ed. Ryan Van Cleave. Univ. of Iowa Press, 2012.
“Barking at Death: Hemingway, Africa, and the Stages of Dying.” Hemingway and Africa. Ed. Miriam B. Mandel. Camden House, 2011.
“My Lover the Car: Ann Beattie’s ‘A Vintage Thunderbird’ and Other Vehicles.” Short Story Criticism Vol. 130. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. The Gale Group, 2010.
“Counternarrative: An Interview with Ann Beattie.” Conversations with Ann Beattie. Ed. Dawn Trouard. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2007.
“Updike, Hawthorne, and American Literary History.” The Cambridge Companion to John Updike. Ed. Stacey Olster. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006.
“Standing in the Reception Line at the Wedding of My Ex-Wife” and “The Boy Who Would Be God” [poems]. Where We Live: Illinois Poets. Ed. Kathleen Kirk. Greatunpublished.com Title No. 863, 2003.
“Ringbang Theory,” “The Colonizers Return,” “Island” [poems]. Imported Breads: Literature of Cultural Exchange. Ed. Phillip Sterling. Mammoth Press, 2003.
“21 Tweaks to a Better Tale.” The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing. Ed. Meg Leder and Jack Heffron. Cincinatti, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 2002.
“Hemingway, Ernest.” The New Book of Knowledge. New York: Grolier Educational Press, 2001.
“Poetic Leaps & Movements.” With Zarina Mullan Plath. The Writer’s Handbook 2001. Ed. Sylvia K. Burack. Waukesha, Wis.: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 2001.
“Shadow Rider: The Hemingway Hero as Western Archetype.” Hemingway and the Natural World. Ed. Robert Fleming. Moscow: Univ. of Idaho Press, 1999.
“Giving the Devil His Due: Leeching and Edification of Spirit in The Scarlet Letter and The Witches of
Eastwick.” John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace. Ed. James O. Yerkes. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.
“Verbal Vermeer: Updike’s Middle-Class Portraiture.” Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike’s “Rabbit” Novels. Ed. Lawrence R. Broer. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1998.
“The Sun Also Rises as ‘A Greater Gatsby’: ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad. Ed. Jackson Bryer and J. Gerald Kennedy. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
“Getting Started in the Little and Literary Magazines.” The Writer’s Handbook 1993. Ed. Sylvia K. Burack. Boston: The Writer Press, Inc., 1993.
“Standing in the Reception Line at the Wedding of My Ex-Wife” [poem]. Men of Our Time: An Anthology of Male Poetry in Contemporary America. Ed. Fred Moramarco and Al Zolynas. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1992.
