Jamie Rhodes

Jamie Rhodes is a writer and academic working in comics, books, TTRPG, and film. He studied Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he focused on Heidegger and Phenomenology, before training as a script reader and founding a filmmaking collective called Donkey Stone Films. He wrote short films and made documentaries in the UK, as well as travelling the world documenting The Homeless World Cup.

In 2011 he founded and managed a charity, The Homeless Film Festival. Through this, he taught creative writing, screenwriting, and filmmaking in homeless shelters and charities. After chairing the charity for three years, Jamie stepped back to focus on his writing career.

His first book was published in 2014 through an Arts Council England project in which he worked with the British Library to write a collection of stories inspired by unusual documents in the library archives. The collection, Dead Men’s Teeth, launched with a series of dramatic readings at the British Library‘s Brontë Room. The stories were reviewed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Olivia Hetreed, as “Gold, mined and minted”.

His first graphic novel was a collaboration with the National Trust entitled A Castle in England. He was Scotney Castle’s first Writer-in-Residence, writing a graphic novel inspired by the castle’s archive collection. The book was published by Nobrow Press in 2017, and nominated for a prestigious Eisner Award at San Diego Comic Con 2018.

Internationally, Jamie was funded by the Kone Foundation to spend time living in the Finnish wilderness on the ruins of an early 20th century mental health sanatorium, and write a graphic novel. The project saw him collaborate with award-winning comics creator, Emmi Nieminen, and indie games designer Erkka Lehmus. Together they created Elämänmäki: Hill of Life, telling the story of the final days at Dr. E. W. Lybeck’s remote natural therapies sanatorium.

Jamie then moved back to the North of England from London and combined creative work with corporate writing and film directing. He wrote an award-winning short film, Amputee (2020), and co-directed this with Polish-English filmmaker Agnieszka Rudel. The film made the official selection of 22 film festivals in countries worldwide. It won Best Short Film in both the Eastern Europe International Movie Awards and Krimson Horyzon International Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at Cannes Shorts.

In 2021, Jamie started his PhD in Philosophy & Creative Writing. He is currently writing his thesis, Alternate Realities: the Phenomenological Experience of Story Immersion. As well as the academic theory component of this PhD, the creative writing outcome has led Jamie to develop a social movement called One Green Wizard. This is aimed at using story immersion and gamification techniques to improve quality of life and mental wellbeing.

The most recent addition to Jamie’s repertoire of writing crafts, is writing for tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG). He was commissioned by Heavyarms TTRPG publisher and content creator, to write creatively for The Gunslinger (2021) Dungeons and Dragons character class. Jamie's second TTRPG project for Heavyarms was The Ranger D&D 5E class supplement, released in August 2022.

Jamie is a full member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and was co-chair of the London & SE region for two years. He has been awarded funding and support by: EM Media, IdeasTap, Arvon Foundation, Kone Foundation, Spread the Word, and the Arts Council England.

Visit Jamie's website: https://thisisjamierhodes.com/