LIVE from NYPL: James McBride | Philip Gourevitch

Event Details

Musician and author James McBride returns to LIVE to mark the paperback publication of his book, Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul, a story that speaks to the tensions and contradictions of the American experience: between North and South, black and white, rich and poor.  He is joined by journalist and author Philip Gourevitch.

JAMES MCBRIDE is the author of the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner, The Good Lord Bird, as well as the bestselling novels Song Yet Sung, Miracle at St. Anna, and the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Color of Water. He is also a saxophonist and composer who teaches music to children in the housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he was born. He is a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH is a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker, the former editor of The Paris Review, and the author of three books: The Ballad Of Abu Ghraib / Standard Operating ProcedureA Cold Case, and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, which won a number of prizes including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award. He is completing a new book, in which he revisits Rwanda, called, You Hide That You Hate Me And I Hide That I Know. His profile of James Brown, “Mr. Brown” was included in the volume, Best Music Writing 2003.

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