“When the great jazz and blues clubs closed - joints where the cash register rang loudly and there wasn't ESPN on TV over the bandstand, and people smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and hollered 'Play on!' - When those places closed, I was pretty much done.”

American writer and musician

James McBride is an American writer and musician. He is known for his fiction and for work that bridges literature and music. He received the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Good Lord Bird. That recognition placed him among the notable American voices in contemporary fiction, with a career shaped by both writing and music.