James A. Owen is founder and executive director of Coppervale International, an art and design studio that also published the periodicals International Studio and Argosy, develops television and film projects, and is redesigning an entire town in Arizona, among other ventures. James has written and illustrated two dozen StarChild comics, the award-winning MythWorld series of novels, the bestselling series, The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, the inspirational nonfiction book Drawing out the Dragons, and more. More than a million copies of his publications are in print, and are sold all over the world.
James began his career in publishing approximately two years before he was old enough to get a driver’s license, and was the youngest publisher ever to be an exhibitor at the San Diego Comicon. He founded Taliesin Press in 1992, and in both 1994 and 1995, James was named to trade magazine Hero Illustrated’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the Comic Book Industry. On July 17, 1995, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Disneyland’s opening, Taliesin Press was renamed Coppervale International.
The two dozen StarChild comics James produced remain in print as the six-volume Essential StarChild set, and was re-released in 2014 as the one-volume Twentieth Anniversary Nearly-Complete Essential StarChild.
The first book in a series of prose novels written by James titled Mythworld won the 2003 AI award for Best Novel, and was nominated alongside books by Stephen King and Michael Crichton for the prestigious Phantastik Prize for Best International Novel.
James has written and illustrated seven books in the bestselling series The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica: Here, There Be Dragons; The Search For The Red Dragon; The Indigo King; The Shadow Dragons; The Dragon’s Apprentice; The Dragons of Winter; and The First Dragon. Several books in the series have been published in more than twenty languages, and Here, There Be Dragons remains in print in hardcover after more than a decade.
Drawing Out The Dragons is the first in a series of three books called The Meditations. The set, which includes the other two volumes, The Barbizon Diaries, and The Grand Design, is currently available in hardcover from James’ Coppervale International. Coppervale also published the four-volume coloring book series All The Colors of Magic, the periodical Words & Pictures, and the in-progress Hundred Books Project, which consists of classic works of literature illustrated by James.
James is also in discussion with the executive producer and associate producer of The Lord of the Rings movie franchise, Mark Ordesky and Rick Porras, respectively, to develop the forthcoming series Fool’s Hollow as a live action feature film, and Here, There Be Dragons as a live action television series.
All of these projects are being developed at the Coppervale Studio, a 14,000 square foot, century-old restored church in Northeastern Arizona, which is managed and run by James’s brother Jeremy.
