James McBride will read from his new novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, followed by an on-stage conversation with acclaimed ABC-13 News journalist Melanie Lawson. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. 

JAMES MCBRIDE has been called “a modern-day Mark Twain” (The New York Times) and was awarded the National Book Award for The Good Lord Bird. He is the author of six novels, including the Oprah’s Book Club Pick Deacon King Kong, Kill ‘Em and Leave, and Miracle at St. Anna. His memoir The Color of Water, which spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list and sold 2.5 million copies, details McBride’s life growing up in Brooklyn’s Red Hook housing projects as part of a large African American family led by his white Jewish mother. The Color of Water is now read in schools across the country and has been translated into 16 languages.

He joins us to read from and talk about his new novel Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, a riveting story about the long-held secrets kept by the immigrant Jewish and African American communities living on Chicken Hill. About the author, Kirkus writes, “If it’s possible for America to have a poet laureate, why can’t James McBride be its storyteller-in-chief?” McBride is also the recipient of a National Humanities Medal, an accomplished jazz musician, and a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.

ABC-13 News journalist MELANIE LAWSON has won numerous awards for her reporting, including three Emmys. She is well-known for her in-depth interviews with a wide range of notables, including three U.S. Presidents, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou, Destiny’s Child, Spike Lee, and Denzel Washington, and for this Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series Brit Bennett, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Annette Gord0n-Reed.