BUFFALO, N.Y. – The 2024-25 season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s BABEL author series closes with The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store author James McBride. On Wednesday, April 30th, 2025 McBride will join Just Buffalo’s Executive and Artistic Director Barbara Cole for an inspiring conversation and Q&A at Kleinhans Music Hall. The event begins at 8:00 p.m., with doors open at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase at justbuffalo.org.
James McBride is a New York Times bestselling author, musician, and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, rested on the NYT bestseller list for two years and explored McBride’s search for identity as the son of a white Jewish woman and a black man. It is considered an American classic and is read in schools and universities across the United States. His debut novel, Miracle at St. Anna, was translated into a major motion picture, directed by American film icon Spike Lee. It was released by Disney/Touchstone in September 2008. James wrote the script for Miracle at St. Anna and co-wrote Spike Lee’s 2012 Red Hook Summer. His novel, Song Yet Sung, was released in paperback in January 2009. His novel The Good Lord Bird about American revolutionary John Brown is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, and has been adapted by Ethan Hawke and Jason Blum into a Showtime series bearing the same name. His 2020 novel Deacon King Kong tells the story of a 1969 shooting in Brooklyn and the strange intersections of the lives of the characters involved in the shooting. Deacon King Kong was a NYT bestseller, winner of the National Book Award, and named a favorite book of the year by both Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama.
McBride’s latest novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, tells the story of small-town secrets and the people who keep them. McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was a runaway NYT bestseller and was named Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
James toured as a saxophonist sideman with jazz legend Jimmy Scott, among others. He has also written songs (music and lyrics) for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Purafe, Gary Burton, and even for the PBS television character “Barney.” (He did not write the “I Love You” song for “Barney,” but wishes he did.) He received the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award for his musical Bo-Bos, co-written with playwright Ed Shockley. His 2003 “Riffin’ and Pontificatin’” Musical Tour was captured in a nationally televised Comcast documentary. He has been featured on national radio and television in America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He often does his readings accompanied by a band.
In the fall of 2016, President Barack Obama awarded McBride the 2015 National Humanities Medal “… for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America. Through writings about his own uniquely American story, and his works of fiction informed by our shared history,his moving stories of love display the character of the American family.”
Tickets, which also include a virtual link for the option to watch from home, are available to the general public for $40; $35 with library card; $10 with student ID. Patron VIP tickets, which include a catered author reception before the event, are $100.
For tickets or more information, visit justbuffalo.org or call 716-832-5400.
BABEL: James McBride
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
8 p.m. (doors open at 7 p.m.)
Kleinhans Music Hall, 3 Symphony Circle
$40 general public, $35 with library card, $10 student
Tickets available at justbuffalo.org
About Just Buffalo Literary Center
Just Buffalo Literary Center’s mission is to create and strengthen communities through the literary arts. For over 45 years, the organization has brought the world’s greatest writers to Buffalo, hosted poetry events and readings, and supported the development of young writers. For more information, visit justbuffalo.org.