Jim Booth is Director of the Effective Writing Program at the University of Maryland University College. He holds bachelor and master's degrees from UNC-Greensboro and a doctorate in writing and the teaching of writing from the University at Albany (SUNY). Jim has taught at Salem College (NC) and North Carolina A&T State University.

A former touring rock musician, Jim currently operates his own independent record label, Goat Boy Records. His wife Susan is a college administrator. One son, Joshua, is a sophomore at Columbia University. The other, Trevor, is a senior in high school.

Jim is a fiction writer and the author of The New Southern Gentleman (Wexford College Press, 2002) and Morte D'Eden, or Tom Sawyer Meets the Rolling Stones (forthcoming, Beach House Books, 2003).