Author Profile:  James DeVita

James DeVita, a native of Long Island, NY, is an author and playwright, and an actor.  Along with his two novels, The Silenced and Blue, he has also written more than twenty plays and adaptations of classics for young audiences and adults.

His plays include:  A Midnight Cry (The story of the Underground Railroad); Rose of Treason (The true story of Sophie Scholl and The White Rose); Trials:  the story of Joan of Arc, and Beth; A Little House Christmas; The Prince and the Pauper; Zero Tolerance (Youth violence); Wonderland! (Musical based on Lewis Carroll's work); The Christmas Angel; Treasure Island; Dinosaur!; The Three Musketeers; Looking Glass Land; Bambi, A Life in the Woods; Arthur:  The Boy Who Would Be King; Swiss Family Robinson; Tom Sawyer; and Huckleberry Finn.  Adult works for the stage:  Dickens In America; Lakeview; Artis Generis; and Waiting for Vern.

Jim is the resident playwright for First Stage Children’s Theater.  His adaptation of Felix Salten’s novel, Bambi, a Life in the Woods, won The Distinguished Play Award from The American Alliance of Theater and Education; Rose of Treason was awarded The Intellectual Freedom Award by the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts; and Looking Glass Land won the Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwrighting Contest.  Jim is also a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Fiction, and The American Alliance of Theater and Education has just honored his body of work with the 2007 Charlotte B.  Chorpenning Award.

His education began as a first mate on the charter boat JIB VII out of Captree Boat Basin, NY, where he worked for five seasons.  Then he studied theater at Suffolk County Community College.  Long Island, where he received his AS, then on to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professional Theater Training Program, where he received a BFA.  He also attended Madison Area Technical College, where he was licensed as an Emergency Medical Technician and currently is a volunteer EMT in his town.

Jim lives in Spring Green, WI, with his wife and two children, where he is a core company member of American Players Theater, a classical repertory theater.  He has been a member of the company there for thirteen years.  Jim is a member of The Dramatists Guild, ASSITEJ, SCBWI, and Actor's Equity Association.

For more information, check out JamesDevita.com and American Players Theatre.