J.D. Scrimgeour is a writer who lives in Salem, Massachusetts. His personal essays and poetry often focus on class and education, exploring what constitutes authentic learning in the exchange between student and teacher. Learning was a major theme in Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class, which won the AWP Award for Nonfiction, and his work on the subject has appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed., Thought & Action, Off the Coast, and Solstice.

He also has published literary work on sports, especially basketball and baseball. He’s the author of the basketball memoir, Spin Moves, and his sports writing has appeared in various journals including the anthology Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball and Creative Nonfiction, where his essay “My Outfield,” won the magazine’s Writing about Baseball contest. He is interviewed about his sport writing in Sport Literate.

Much of his work is interdisciplinary, exploring connections between writing and other arts. He has collaborated with artists in other media, including performing works with photographer Kim Mimnaugh and choreographer Caitlin Corbett. For several years, he and Philip Swanson have collaborated on Confluence, a performance group blending poetry and music. And, in 2014, he wrote the book and lyrics to Only Human, a musical that premiered in Salem Ames Hall Theater in 2014.

Scrimgeour served as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University for several years. He created and directs the Salem Poetry Seminar, a free week-long summer program for select student poets at Massachusetts public colleges and universities. He is on the executive board of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and Chair of the Salem Athenaeum Writers Committee.

For the past twenty-five years he has lived in Salem, a city where some of his ancestors were put to death for being witches and others sat on the jury that found them guilty.