James C. L. Brown holds the MFA from American University, where he worked with Frank Conroy, Myra Sklarew, Kermit Moyer, Henry Taylor, Linda Pastan, James Alan McPherson, Joyce Kornblatt, Terry MacMillan, Moshe Dor, Ed Kessler, William Stahr, and others.

His scholarly papers include "Who Would Wish A Disillusioned Gatsby on the World?" and "The Club That Wants to Keep Jimmy Gatz Out," both published in Gargoyle #65, 2016, “On PTSD in The Great Gatsby,” published in Gargoyle, #64, Fall 2015, “Re-imag(in)ing the Ideal: Notes on Daisy’s Passing in The Great Gatsby” presented at the 7th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, September, 2002, St. Paul, Minnesota, and subsequently published in Gargoyle;  "The Religious Significance of the Battle Police Episode in A Farewell to Arms" presented at the American Literature Association Conference, May, 2000, Long Beach California, and "T.S. Eliot and the Paradox of Faith and Life", an alternate selection at the University of Hew Hampshire Symposium on Eliot, June, 1988. 

He is CEO of Broadkill Publishing Associates, LLC, which publishes chapbooks under the Broadkill Press imprint, and full-length collections of fiction and poetry under the Broadkill River Press imprint.

He is the Founder, and former Publisher and Editor, of The Broadkill Review, initially a PDF Literary Journal which came out six times a year, now a web publication under Editor Scott Whitaker.

He is Founder and was, for the first decade, Director of the Annual John Milton Memorial Celebration of Poets and Poetry. His vision of a statue of John Milton in the Town of Milton (which named itself for the English poet and political theorist) was achieved (thanks to the Milton Community Foundation with the financial assistance of, among other donors, the DDoA) in time for the poet and political philosopher's 400th birthday, the unveiling of which an event. at which the personal representative of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was present and conveyed the well wishes of the Royal Family.

He was, for the first nine years of the Prize, Director of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which was then an annual chapbook manuscript competition open to Delmarva Poets.  It is now open to full-length manuscripts from poets in the mid-Atlantic, coordinated by Linda Blaskey.

He taught for thirteen years at George Washington University, eight years (concurrently with GWU) at Georgetown University, and, in retirement, for two semesters at University of Delaware and for three years at Wesley College in Dover, Delaware.

He taught the first Creative Writing Workshop (Poetry: Form, Function, and You) to be offered at the Smithsonian Institution.  

He was formerly Fiction Editor of The Washington Review of the Arts, and an Associate Editor with both the Sulphur River Literary Review and Wordwrights! Magazine  He has served as a member of the Poetry Committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library. He also served as Poetry Critic for The Washington Times from 2005 to 2006. He is an un-credited literary consultant to Delaware Beach Life.

Writing as Jamie Brown, his poetry has been published in, American Literary, Beltway Poetry Quarterly (on-line),The Cafe Review, California Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Daughters & Son, Delaware Beach Life, Delaware Poetry Review (on-line), Delmarva Quarterly, Galley Sail Review, Gargoyle, Ginosko (forthcoming), Gypsy Blood Review, Handbook for Mortals 2^nd ed. (Oxford University Press), Howling Dog, Kipple, Maintenant, Midwest Poetry Review, Minimus, Musings, Nebo, Negative Capability, Parnassus Poetry Journal, Phase and Cycle, Poet Lore, Poetry Motel, Potomac Review, Prints: Second Saturday Poets Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, The Review, San Fernando Poetry Journal, So It Goes: the Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, Spontaneous Combustion, Sulphur River Literary Review, Tekintet (in translation in Hungary), Voices International, Winners, and Wordwrights Magazine.

His fiction has been published in Cup of Joe: Coffee House Flash Fiction Anthology, The Delmarva Review, The Fiction Review, Gargoyle, Linden Avenue Literary Journal (http://www. http://lindenavelit.com/issue-41-october-2015/), Sulphur River Literary Review, The Washington Review of the Arts, and Wordwrights Magazine.

His non-fiction has been published in The Broadkill Review, Dimensions Magazine, Gargoyle, The GW Forum, Poet Lore, SportsFan Magazine, Sulphur River Literary Review, The Washington Review, and The Washington Times. 

Five of his plays have been produced "off-Ken-Cen" in the DC Area, a revival of one of which, “Death Comes Twice,” a comedy about Sex and Death (and Sex with Death), swept the five major awards in the 2007 One-Act Play Competition in Milton, Delaware (Best Play, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Costuming). The reprise of his one-act play,  "The Re-Education of the American Proletariate," won the Best Actor Award the following year.

He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Delaware Press Association, and the Natonal Writer's Union.