James Morrow

Born in Philadelphia in 1947, James Morrow spent his adolescence in Hillside Cemetery thanks to his passion for 8mm moviemaking. He and his friends used the graveyard for horror and fantasy films, including adaptations of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

After receiving degrees from the universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard, Morrow turned to writing. His breakout novel, This Is the Way the World Ends, was the BBC’s Best Science Fiction Novel of 1986. His next novel, Only Begotten Daughter, chronicling the escapades of Jesus Christ’s half-sister in contemporary Atlantic City, won the World Fantasy Award.

In the 1990’s Morrow devoted his literary energies to killing God, resulting in three novels: Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, and The Eternal Footman. Having grown sick of his Creator, Morrow next examined the 1604 Parliamentary Witchcraft Act and the birth of the scientific worldview in The Last Witchfinder. Its sequel, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, relates the adventures of a failed philosophy student hired to implant a conscience in a mysterious young woman whose brain is a tabula rasa.

Jim lives in Pennsylvania, with his wife, his son, and his sheepdog.