Jim was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. He loves outdoor sports including, biking, kayaking, canoeing, camping, and fishing. It was his love of camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota that led him to write Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir. The book features humorous accounts of trips he took to the area with his brothers, friends, and children over the past twenty-five years. 

Writing Dirty Shirt spurred his lifelong interest in writing, and he has since published three other memoirs and six books of poetry. Jim is married to Donna and has two children. He is semi-retired and lives and works in Waukesha, Wisconsin as a Business Development Specialist for Cloudpoint Geospatial. He was the 2018/2019 poet laureate for the Village of Wales, Wisconsin.