James Welby is an American writer based in Nice, France, and a former production designer and art director of twenty years. He relocated from Los Angeles to the Côte d'Azur in 2022.
His writing is on place, memory, and the practice of paying attention.
Elsewhere, his literary travel journal in progress, asks what places ask of us and what we find out about ourselves by answering. Currently sixty-two essays.
Du Marché, his culinary companion series, follows the kitchen he is building somewhere between France and Italy. Each relevé begins at a market and ends at a table. Currently twenty-four relevés.
Looking Elsewhere is the weekly Substack drawn from both.
He lives in Mont Boron with his husband and two dogs.
Selected Essays
From Elsewhere, an essay collection in progress.
Essay 001
Los Angeles / Nice
1,238 words
The Person Who Goes
On the ending of a twenty-year love affair with a city, and the moment you realize you have already left.
What ends any relationship with someone you love? I loved my city. I loved my career and my time at the Studio. I loved the 28th floor and the commute and the particular quality of light on the freeway in the early morning when the marine layer was still sitting on the basin and the day had not yet decided what it was going to be. And one day the love was gone. It did not announce itself. That is the thing about this kind of ending.
Available on request →
Essay 002
Istanbul
2,401 words
The Wrong Side of the Bridge
Two nights at the Palazzo Corpi, a shipbuilder who never saw his own ceilings, and the stories we choose to remember over the ones that actually happened.
Ignazio Corpi was a Genoese shipbuilder who arrived in Istanbul in the 1870s. He commissioned an Italian architect, had Carrara marble shipped for the floors and Piemonte rosewood for the doors and window frames, and then died in 1882 before a single room was finished. Nine years of construction. Not one completed ceiling to look up at. We were told, with great conviction and a completely straight face, that the building had been lost in a card game. We nodded. We were in Istanbul.
Available on request →
Essay 003
Tokyo
1,550 words
Kilometer Zero
A last day in Tokyo, a bridge that has been standing in the rain for 115 years, and the difference between falling in love with a place and falling in love with who you are there.
Nihombashi is the bridge that is kilometer zero of Japan. All distances in the country are measured from this point. It has been here since 1603. The kirin on the lamp posts are the original bronze castings, part dragon part deer, a mythological creature that appears in Japanese tradition wherever good fortune is needed. They have been standing in the same rain for 115 years. I stood on the bridge in the rain knowing exactly where I was.
Available on request →
Essay 004
Tokyo
1,192 words
Cold War Communiqué
An unforgettable Russian-Japanese-English fixer, ten spoiled Americans, faux cherry blossoms ordered as a hedge against nature, and a ninety-six percent chance of rain.
Katya is small, blonde, Russian, and speaks Japanese and English with a severity of tone that transforms the most routine logistical exchange into something that sounds like a formal diplomatic warning. She is our local fixer. She has the meerkat quality of someone engaged in constant threat assessment: head appearing around corners at unexpected angles, eyes with the full iris exposed. She was tasked today with ferrying ten spoiled Americans through six venues across Tokyo in two vans and a bullet train. She suffered no fools. There were no fools left by the end of it.
Available on request →