james lu dunbar
I was born on May 31st, 1983, in Oakland, California, to Mimi Lou and Ian Dunbar.
Hi! My name is James Lu Dunbar, although I usually go by Jamie.
This is my website.
As a developmental psychologist from China, and a world-renowned puppy trainer from England, they made one heck of a parenting team.
My immediate family would later grow to include a step-father, two half-brothers, and more recently, a step-mom, all of whom have enriched my life greatly.
I went to Black Pine Circle, a tiny, private elementary school that carefully nurtured childhood curiosity within a safe and supportive environment.
Then I went to Berkeley High, a large public school with a dizzying diversity of people, activities and classes. I found a wonderful education at both.
I’ve always enjoyed drawing, and at some point I decided that writing and illustrating books could be an interesting career. I co-authored and illustrated a few projects at Berkeley High, including Gordy McGranite,
a cartoon book about calculus, which I have recently published and is now available for sale.
I went to Brown University for college, where I majored in Sociology and Visual Arts (utilizing RISD for a couple of classes), with the idea of someday creating thought-provoking children’s books, like those of my personal hero, Theodore Seuss Geisel. I did a little bit of digital work, a lot of oil painting, a good bit of book making, and senior year I tried some sculpture and quilting. Much of this work is on this website, on the College Art pages.
Starting in 2003, I spent the summers in Idaho working as a white-water rafting guide on multi-day trips down the truly super-stupendous Salmon and Snake rivers. I’ve always loved heat + water, (an earlier career aspiration was luxury resort swimming pool architect) and as I got older I developed a real affinity for nature as well. Well, the Salmon river in the summer time is all of these things to the maximum, plus a healthy helping of really amazing people. It was here that I would find the inspiration for my 7 River Riddles, writing most of them while floating downstream.
After college I spent six months traveling around the Pacific, with my partner, Trina, who I’ve been with since 2002. It was a pretty huge trip for me, having never traveled anywhere near that distance or duration before, let alone with one other person. Fortunately, it was fabulous. We turned out to be a wonderful traveling team, and found ourselves in some pretty amazing places. Along the way I took about 6000 photos, a small percentage of which you can see on my Photo pages.
After our travels, we tried a new sort of adventure, as “working adults” in Boston, with real jobs and everything. Well kind of. I only worked three days of the week, mostly stapling, but it paid for rent and groceries. I spent my off-days at the Boston Public Library branches conducting an independent study of children’s books, graphic novels, and the history of everything. My final project was the first draft of The Universe Verse, a rhyming history of everything that I am currently in the process of making into a series of three illustrated books. I’ve completed & self-published Book 1: BANG! which you can view online or purchase as a paperback.
Book 2 is in the works now.
