James McBride

James McBride is an American novelist, memoirist, screenwriter and jazz musician born in New York City in 1957. He studied music composition at Oberlin College and journalism at Columbia University before working as a journalist and professional saxophonist. He first achieved wide recognition with The Color of Water, a memoir about growing up in a large African American family and investigating the life of his white Jewish mother. McBride has also written for film and television and received the National Humanities Medal for his contribution to American literature and cultural understanding.

McBride’s historical fiction frequently recovers overlooked African American communities and combines serious subjects with humour, music and richly drawn ensemble casts. Miracle at St. Anna follows soldiers of the predominantly African American 92nd Infantry Division in Italy during the Second World War, while Song Yet Sung explores slavery and resistance in nineteenth-century Maryland. The Good Lord Bird, a comic account of abolitionist John Brown and the raid on Harpers Ferry, won the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. His later novels include Deacon King Kong and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which portrays the interconnected Black, Jewish and immigrant residents of a Pennsylvania community during the 1920s and 1930s.