James Cleary is the pen name for James DeVita — author, actor, director, and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Fiction.

A native of Long Island, NY, DeVita spent his early years fishing the Great South Bay before stumbling into theater at Suffolk County Community College and never looking back. He went on to earn a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has since built an acclaimed career on both sides of the page — as a core company member and literary manager at American Players Theater, a classical repertory company in Wisconsin, and as a novelist whose work spans YA, adult thriller, and now post-apocalyptic fiction.

He has performed and directed across the United States and internationally — including Japan, Germany, Australia, and Ireland — and spent fifteen years as a volunteer EMT in Spring Green, WI. His plays have earned the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance of Theater and Education and the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Award for his body of work.

Sanctuary is his debut thriller as James Cleary. He is also the author of The Silenced, A Winsome Murder, and Blue.

Writing, he says, brings him almost as much joy as fishing. Almost.