James Richard Broughton was born in Modesto, California. He earned a B.A. from Stanford University in 1936 and also studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He married Suzanna Hart in 1962, and they had two children, a son and a daughter. He was divorced in 1978. At various times he has worked as a merchant marine, printer, ghost-writer, waiter, book reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune , and as resident playwright at the San Francisco Playhouse Repertory Theatre (1958-1964). He was also a playwright fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Foundation in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1969. He resigned from the faculty of San Francisco State University in 1976 but is still on the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute.

Although he considers himself "first and foremost a poet," he has received perhaps more attention as a playwright and filmmaker. He has been the recipient of...