{"id":68598,"date":"2026-02-27T11:36:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=68598"},"modified":"2026-02-27T11:46:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:46:30","slug":"marlon-james","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/event\/marlon-james\/","title":{"rendered":"Marlon James"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marlon James\u00a0won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em><\/a>, making him the first Jamaican author to take home the U.K.\u2019s most prestigious literary award. In the work, James combines masterful storytelling with brilliant skill at characterization and an eye for detail to forge a bold novel of dazzling ambition and scope. He explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit confront the untold history of Jamaica in the 1970\u2019s, with excursions to the assassination attempt on reggae musician Bob Marley, as well as the country\u2019s own clandestine battles during the cold war.<\/p>\n

James cites influences as diverse as Greek tragedy, William Faulkner, the LA crime novelist James Ellroy, Shakespeare, Batman, and the X-Men. Writing for\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, Michiko Kakutani said of\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It\u2019s also raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, exhilarating, and exhausting\u2014a testament to Mr. James\u2019s vaulting ambition and prodigious talent.\u201d In addition to the Man Booker Prize,\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em>\u00a0won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.<\/p>\n

Marlon James\u2019 first novel,\u00a0John Crow\u2019s Devil<\/em><\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in the 1950s. Though rejected 78 times before being accepted for publication,\u00a0John Crow\u2019s Devil<\/em>\u00a0went on to become a finalist for the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, as well as a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Editor\u2019s Choice. His second novel,\u00a0The Book of Night Women<\/em><\/a>, is about a slave woman\u2019s revolt on a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n

The work won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, as well as an NAACP Image Award. His best-selling book,\u00a0<\/em>Black Leopard, Red Wolf<\/em><\/a>, is the first in the Dark Star Trilogy, a fantasy series set in African legend.\u00a0Black Leopard, Red Wolf<\/em>\u00a0received the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0Book Prizes, the 2020 Locus Award for Horror, was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in the Fiction category, was named one of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s\u00a010 Best Books of 2019<\/a>,\u00a0and was included in the\u00a0Kirkus<\/em>\u00a0list for The\u00a0Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far). The second book in the trilogy,\u00a0Moon Witch, Spider King<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>was an instant\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Bestseller. The third book will be titled\u00a0White Wing, Dark Star<\/em>\u00a0(Random House).<\/p>\n

James\u2019 short fiction and nonfiction have been anthologized in\u00a0Bronx Noir<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Book of Men: Eighty Writers on How to Be a Man<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere, and have appeared in\u00a0Esquire<\/em>,\u00a0Granta<\/em>,\u00a0Harper\u2019s<\/em>,\u00a0The Caribbean Review of Books,<\/em>\u00a0and other publications. His widely read essay, \u201cFrom Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself<\/a>,\u201d appeared in the\u00a0New York Times Magazine<\/em>. In early 2016, his viral video\u00a0Are you racist? \u2018No\u2019 isn\u2019t a good enough answer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0received millions of hits. James hosts a popular podcast about literature with Jake Morrissey called\u00a0Marlon and Jake Read Dead People<\/em><\/a>. He provided commentary for\u00a0The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em><\/a>\u00a0from ReBind. Marlon James wrote and is executive producer for\u00a0Get Millie Black<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a 6-part crime drama set in Jamaica for movie channel HBO and the\u00a0UK\u2019s Channel 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marlon James\u00a0won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em><\/a>, making him the first Jamaican author to take home the U.K.\u2019s most prestigious literary award. In the work, James combines masterful storytelling with brilliant skill at characterization and an eye for detail to forge a bold novel of dazzling ambition and scope. He explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit confront the untold history of Jamaica in the 1970\u2019s, with excursions to the assassination attempt on reggae musician Bob Marley, as well as the country\u2019s own clandestine battles during the cold war.<\/p>\n

James cites influences as diverse as Greek tragedy, William Faulkner, the LA crime novelist James Ellroy, Shakespeare, Batman, and the X-Men. Writing for\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, Michiko Kakutani said of\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It\u2019s also raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, exhilarating, and exhausting\u2014a testament to Mr. James\u2019s vaulting ambition and prodigious talent.\u201d In addition to the Man Booker Prize,\u00a0A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/em>\u00a0won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.<\/p>\n

Marlon James\u2019 first novel,\u00a0John Crow\u2019s Devil<\/em><\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in the 1950s. Though rejected 78 times before being accepted for publication,\u00a0John Crow\u2019s Devil<\/em>\u00a0went on to become a finalist for the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, as well as a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Editor\u2019s Choice. His second novel,\u00a0The Book of Night Women<\/em><\/a>, is about a slave woman\u2019s revolt on a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n

The work won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, as well as an NAACP Image Award. His best-selling book,\u00a0<\/em>Black Leopard, Red Wolf<\/em><\/a>, is the first in the Dark Star Trilogy, a fantasy series set in African legend.\u00a0Black Leopard, Red Wolf<\/em>\u00a0received the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0Book Prizes, the 2020 Locus Award for Horror, was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in the Fiction category, was named one of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s\u00a010 Best Books of 2019<\/a>,\u00a0and was included in the\u00a0Kirkus<\/em>\u00a0list for The\u00a0Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far). The second book in the trilogy,\u00a0Moon Witch, Spider King<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>was an instant\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Bestseller. The third book will be titled\u00a0White Wing, Dark Star<\/em>\u00a0(Random House).<\/p>\n

James\u2019 short fiction and nonfiction have been anthologized in\u00a0Bronx Noir<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Book of Men: Eighty Writers on How to Be a Man<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere, and have appeared in\u00a0Esquire<\/em>,\u00a0Granta<\/em>,\u00a0Harper\u2019s<\/em>,\u00a0The Caribbean Review of Books,<\/em>\u00a0and other publications. His widely read essay, \u201cFrom Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself<\/a>,\u201d appeared in the\u00a0New York Times Magazine<\/em>. In early 2016, his viral video\u00a0Are you racist? \u2018No\u2019 isn\u2019t a good enough answer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0received millions of hits. James hosts a popular podcast about literature with Jake Morrissey called\u00a0Marlon and Jake Read Dead People<\/em><\/a>. He provided commentary for\u00a0The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em><\/a>\u00a0from ReBind. Marlon James wrote and is executive producer for\u00a0Get Millie Black<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a 6-part crime drama set in Jamaica for movie channel HBO and the\u00a0UK\u2019s Channel 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":68599,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","_tribe_events_is_hybrid":"","_tribe_events_is_virtual":"","_tribe_events_virtual_video_source":"","_tribe_events_virtual_embed_video":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button_text":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_at":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_to":[],"_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_event":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_views":"","_tribe_events_virtual_url":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[57],"class_list":["post-68598","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tribe_events_cat-rental-partner-events","cat_rental-partner-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/68598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/68598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68598"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=68598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}