Rate My Professor James Vicars

James Vicars is an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England, appointed in 2014. He holds a PhD from the University of New England awarded in 2014, a Master of Arts in Communications from Charles Sturt University, a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of New England, and a Bachelor of Arts in English. Vicars commenced his professional writing career as a journalist and developed creatively as a poet and short story writer in his mid-twenties. During the 1990s, he edited numerous publications and the literary magazine New England Review. His career includes positions as a communications consultant, editor, teacher, lecturer, and writing mentor. He has also served as a Director and former Board Chair of The Armidale Waldorf School.

Vicars specializes in scholarly research on biography and fictional biography. His doctoral research examined the life of Millicent Maude Bryant, Australia's first woman to earn a pilot's licence, leading to the publication of the book Beyond the Sky: The Passions of Millicent Bryant, Aviator by Melbourne Books in 2020. He has authored refereed conference papers including "‘Storying’ lives: biography as story and the ethical imagining and ‘holding’ of lives" at the 16th Annual AAWP Conference in 2011 and "Writing encounters" at the 17th Annual AAWP Conference in 2012. An additional key publication is "Discarding the disclaimer? Reappraising fiction as a mode of biography" in TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. Vicars received fellowships from the NSW Ministry for the Arts and the Eleanor Dark Foundation. His literary interests encompass contemporary novels, life writing, poetry, and twentieth-century English and Australian literature. As a sessional lecturer, he contributes to creative writing education at the University of New England.