Jim Stinson

Taught writing at Harvard and media at UCLA, Jim Stinson has done both ever since.

On the writing side he started early, publishing “Restorations of Elizabethan Public Playhouses,” but was soon downsized from Academe, which is probably just as well. After an interlude of earning a living, he wrote four Stoney Winston Hollywood mysteries, Double Exposure, Low Angles, Truck Shot, and TV Safe, which were published by Scribner. Today they are available from Lulu.com. Currently, his mainstream novel, San Andreas Fault, is being readied for publication by The Plume Books imprint of Penguin.

On the media side, he’s made everything from feature films to instructional gems like Electrical Hazards in the Coronary Care Unit. Today, he works, pro bono, on website and podcast media for progressive legislators and causes.

Combining writing and media, he was a columnist and contributing editor at Videomaker magazine for 12 years. In 2001, Goodheart-Willcox published his college and high school textbook, Video: Communication and Production. A revised second edition was rebranded Video: Digital Communication and Production, and a third, massively updated edition is currently in preparation for release in 2011.

He has, over the years, returned to the classroom, teaching film production at Art Center College of Design, Media history and criticism at California State University Los Angeles, and video production at La Canada High School, La Canada, CA. Nowadays, he makes scholarly contributions to Wikipedia.

Though born and bred in Pittsburgh, PA, he has spent all his adult life in California and Oregon, where he now lives with his wife, Sue. He dotes on his two children and is pleased to report that they remain at large.