James Work grew up in the Fall River Valley a few miles from Estes Park, Colorado. After going to Colorado State University for two degrees and finishing a University of New Mexico Ph.D in studies of Victorian England's literature and culture, he returned to CSU on a "temporary" teaching assignment that lasted thirty years. Around 1980 or so his literary interest shifted from the Victorian poets to Western American writers and within ten years he had published a major textbook in Western American literature and had been elected president of the Western Literature Association.