Bishop grew up in
Pine Mountain, Georgia, and earned his
bachelor's and
master's degrees in German from the
University of Georgia. He was a
Fulbright scholar at
Christian-Albrechts University in
Kiel,
Germany. He helped run an exchange program at
Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany. Bishop spent four years living in Germany, where (according to his web site) he "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer and wooing a certain fraulein," Stephanie Hofer, who later became his wife. From 1995 to 1996 he taught at the Zentrales Sprachlabor of
Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg, and collected survey data for his Master's Thesis,
Jugendsprache: a critical study of German "Youth Language." Before teaching at Virginia Tech, Bishop worked in the Office of Arts and Sciences Information Services (OASIS) as an academic-technology liaison at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he provided technical support for faculty and staff members and graduate students. While at UNC, in addition to instructing German language classes, he developed a software package for students to digitally record and submit spoken language assignments to professors, a significant improvement over the previously used magnetic tape method. He received an OASIS Director's Choice Award in 2004. He produced the cover art for Michael Jasper's book
Gunning for the Buddha, and for five of Michael Bishop's books; and designed "ingenious pieces of furniture." One of Bishop's "haunting" wrap-around book jackets is featured on the anthology
Passing for Human, edited by Michael Bishop and Steve Utley. According to Michael Bishop, Jamie "spoke German like a native, understood computers inside out, played drums in a basement band, bicycled and hiked, followed the fortunes of the Atlanta Braves as obsessively as his mother, grandmothers, and I did, and made friends everywhere. He was a people lover from the get-go, and his energy levels put mine to shame." ==Death==