James W Hall

James W. Hall (born 1947) is an American author and professor from Florida. He has written eighteen novels, four books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a collection of essays. His novels include Under Cover of Daylight, Hard Aground, Gone Wild, Buzz Cut, Red Sky at Night, Rough Draft, Off the Chart and Silencer. His writing includes the collection of personal essays Hot Damn, written for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel's Sunshine Magazine, Washington Post and Miami Herald. His book Hit Lit is about common features of the twelve most commercially successful novels of the last hundred years. His two short story collections are Paper Products and Over Exposure. Over Exposure includes the short story "The Carch", winner of an Edgar Award. He also won a John D. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Florida Fiction, presented by the JDM Bibliophile.

Hall was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1947. He has a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in literature from the University of Utah. He was a Fulbright professor of literature in Spain.

Hall began his career as a poet. He taught at Florida International University in Miami for 40 years and founded the school's creative writing program in the early 1970s.

His wife's name is Evelyn and they have three dogs. They live in South Florida and western North Carolina (in the mountains).

Several of Hall's novels center on a loner named Thorn who ties bonefish flies and partners with his private-eye friend Sugarman. They thwart a range of villains. Hall's fiction often uses Florida settings as a backdrop, including setting such as the Everglades and Key West. Hall's writing explores the contrast in South Florida between squalor and poverty coexisting with tremendous wealth and glamor.