James Downey

James Downey (born July 4, 1958) is an American author and rare book and document conservator. He is also known as an internet performance artist, who has organized two relatively high-profile stunts, "Paint the Moon" and "Nobel Prize for Jo". In addition, he is one of the principals behind the ballistics research project Ballistics by the Inch and was a writer for Guns.com. His This I Believe essay was one of the most widely read prior to its broadcast on March 23, 2015. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Downey graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, and did graduate work in English Literature at the University of Iowa. While there he discovered the Iowa Center for the Book, where he learned bookbinding, papermaking and book conservation, launching his career as a book and paper conservator. While at Iowa he also took classes with the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which furthered his desire to write. Books Communion of Dreams Downey's first novel, Communion of Dreams was published in January 2012. Set in 2052, when the human race is still struggling to recover from a massive pandemic flu some 40 years earlier. When an independent prospector on Saturn's moon Titan discovers an alien artifact, assumptions that we are alone in the universe are called into question. Knowing that news of such a discovery could prompt chaos on Earth, a small team is sent to investigate and hopefully manage the situation. What they find is that there's more to human history, and human abilities, than any of them ever imagined. And that they will need all those insights, and all those abilities, to face the greatest threat yet to human survival.