James McBride is an accomplished musician and author of the award-winning The Color of Water and Miracle at St. Anna, which was optioned in 2007 by filmmaker Spike Lee. He has written for The Washington Post, People, The Boston Globe, Essence, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. A graduate of Oberlin College and awarded a master's in journalism from New York's Columbia University at the age of twenty-two, McBride holds several honorary doctorates and is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. McBride lives in Pennsylvania and New York.