James G. Porter was educated in Port Pirie in South Australia and completed a degree in Electronic Engineering at Adelaide University. He worked with Telecom in Australia and with the United Nations in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea.He bought an old rundown pineapple plantation on Magnetic Island off the Queensland coast and became a full time writer. Magnetic Island and the neighbouring islands became the setting for his writing at this time. After three years there he returned to Papua New Guinea.

In 1972 Porter bought a farm on the banks of the Motueka River in the Nelson district of New Zealand's South Island. Here while running his small farm and teaching part time at a high school nearby, he wrote his first successful children's book The Swiftlet Isles. After eight years he returned to Queensland to live.

As well as fiction writing and editing, Porter wrote the educational books Discovering Magnetic Island (1983), Discovering The Family Islands (1983) and A Family of Islands (2000). Other works include Night in Kuta and Other Stories (1980), an English language reading textbook for Pacific Island students.