Jim DeVivo created the Young Playwrights Guide in 2015 as part of his doctoral dissertation exploring young playwrights programming across the United State.

Raised in the theatre, and hooked as a technical apprentice while still in elementary school, Jim builds on over 30 years' experience as an artist, educator, and researcher specializing in new plays for and by young people.

Jim is teacher of Theatre at William R. Satz Intermediate School (grades 7-8) and Holmdel High School (grades 9-12). He is also an adjunct professor in the Program in Educational Theatre at NYU where he has taught the Introduction to Theatre for Young Audiences and Drama in Education I courses and an Artistic Associate for the New Plays for Young Audiences Series at the Provincetown Playhouse. Jim's research interests are the history and critique of theatre for young audiences, theatre history, and new play development. His doctoral dissertation, titled Taking Them Seriously: A Study of the Long-term Impact of Participation in the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival, focused on festival participants’ perceptions of how collaboration with professional theatre artists as a young writer guided subsequent career work, personal development, and education. While conducting dissertation research, Jim created The Young Playwrights Guide, to locate publication and performance opportunities for their work. His dissertation proposal was a finalist for the Phi Delta Kappa Dissertation Award in 2015 and his research is published in Youth Theatre Journal, ArtsPraxis, and The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Young People .

For 16 years, Jim taught playwriting and devising workshops for youth and produced the annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival for Writers Theatre of New Jersey where he spent 10 years as Director of Education. His teaching experience includes theatre courses at Manhattanville College, Monmouth University, and Middlesex County College, as well as playwriting and arts integration workshops for teachers. Jim is a certified teacher of Theatre and English in New Jersey where he has also served on the advisory boards for both the Middlesex County Vocational Technical High School of the Arts and the Union County Academy for Performing Arts; Jim also consulted on theatre exit exams for the NJ Department of Education. In 2017, Jim developed the inaugural playwriting program for New Jersey Thespians, the state chapter of the International Thespian Society / Educational Theatre Association. He is a member of the board of directors for New Jersey Thespians and the Oscar Hammerstein Museum & Theatre Education Center.

Jim was awarded the Lowell S. and Nancy Swortzell Graduate Scholarship (2008), a NJ Governor’s Award for Arts Education (2009), an Award of Excellence from the NJ Theatre Alliance (2018), and is a member of the Liverpool Central School District Fine Arts Hall of Fame.

Jim holds PhD and MA degrees in Educational Theatre from NYU and graduated magna cum laude with University Honors from Niagara University with a dual major BFA in Theatre and English. Jim is married to award-winner theatre teacher, Bridget DeVivo, who created the drama program at Oak Hill Academy in Lincroft, NJ. Together, they run Stargazer Performing Arts and a troupe of three children and one pug... some of whom take direction well.