James McBride is an American author, musician, and screenwriter. His first book, a 1995 memoir called The Color of Water, discussed his Brooklyn upbringing in a poor, Black family led by a white mother. The Color of Water won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Miracle at St. Anna (2001) is his debut novel. McBride has five further novels: Song Yet Sung (2008), The Good Lord Bird (2013), Five-Carat Soul (2017), Deacon King Kong (2020), and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (2023). The Good Lord Bird won the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, and Deacon King Kong won the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

McBride also authored the nonfiction Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul (2016) and contributed to a collection entitled Hard Listening, authored by the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of bestselling authors (including Stephen King and Mitch Albom) who also perform together as a musical group. McBride is a noted musician and composer whose works have appeared internationally. He has written three film scripts, two of which were based on his books (Miracle at St. Anna and Good Lord Bird); the third, Red Hook Summer (2012), he co-wrote with director Spike Lee.