ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
KENT ARTIST PROFILE:
JAMES ESSINGER
PRINCIPAL OF THE CONRAD PRESS
JAMES ESSINGER WAS BORN IN LEICESTER IN 1957 AND HAS LIVED IN CANTERBURY IN
SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND SINCE 1986. JAMES HAS WORKED AS A FREELANCE PROFESSIONAL
WRITER AND EDITOR SINCE 1988. HE FOUNDED THE PUBLISHING FIRM THE CONRAD PRESS,
WHICH NOW HAS MORE THAN 130 WRITERS, IN DECEMBER 2015.
Having aspired to be a writer since the age of about
seven, James holds an MA (Hons) in English
Language and Literature from Lincoln College,
Oxford University.
After publishing more than twenty business and
management books, James’s first mass-market book
was Jacquard's Web, how a hand loom led to the birth of
the information age (2004) followed by Spellbound: the
improbable story of English spelling (2006), which was
published both in the UK and the US.
James’s book, Ada’s Algorithm (originally entitled A
Female Genius), a new biography of Lord Byron’s
daughter Ada Lovelace, was published in the UK in
October 2013. A longer version of this book was
published in the US in October 2014 under the title
Ada’s Algorithm. The book has also been published in
a Finnish-language and Spanish-language edition
and an option on the book for movie production has
been sold to Monumental Pictures.
Frankie: how one woman prevented a pharmaceutical disaster,
which is about how Dr Frances Kelsey saved the
United States from thalidomide, is authored by James
and by Sandra Koutzenko. The book was published
by Beacon Publishing of the US in April 2019 under
their Blue Sparrow imprint. A UK edition of this
book, entitled Frankie: the woman who saved millions from
thalidomide was published by The History Press in
London in June 2019.
James is also the author of the novel The Mating Game,
published in December 2016 in the UK by The
Conrad Press. This novel is set in the world of chess
and has been very favourably received. A Hollywood
production company has taken an option on the
book. James’s co-author on The Mating Games is the
nine-times British Women’s Chess Champion Jovanka
Houska but James wrote the book. James involved
Jovanka on the project because the narrator is a
woman chess champion.
James’s non-fiction book Charles and Ada: the true story
of the friendship between computer pioneers Charles Babbage
and Ada Lovelace, was published by The History Press
in August 2019.
James’s latest books are two novels, The Ada Lovelace
Project, a historical novel with a science fiction element,
the authorial attribution of which he also plans to
share with Jovanka, and Rollercoaster, a comic thriller
which James wrote in 1979 and revised considerably
in 2019.
James has also ghost-written several books, with a
particular expertise at ghost-writing the life stories
of prominent people in their own voice. He is
also a highly skilled editor whose services are much
in demand.
www.jamesessinger.com
[email protected]
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