October 14, 2015

Distinguished Writer in Residence James McBride Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Noted author and NYU Distinguished Writer in Residence James McBride was inducted into the 2015 Class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this past weekend.

McBride won the 2013 National Book Award for his novel, The Good Lord Bird, written as the memoir of Henry Shackleford, a slave who flees town with the legendary abolitionist John Brownand is passing as a girl. McBride’s bestselling 1997 memoir, The Color of Water, is considered an American literary classic. McBride teaches writing at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers. Its members are selected from across academia, business and government sectors, both internationally and from the U. S. Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Margaret Meade and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.