January 22, 1999		Best-Selling Author James McBride ’79 Delivers Oberlin College's Spring 1999 Convocation Address Media Contact: Mark Graham
	Thursday, Feb. 11 8 p.m. Finney Chapel on the corner of Professor and Lorain (Rt. 511) Streets		OBERLIN, OHIO--Journalist and musician James McBride '79 will discuss his best-selling memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, at Oberlin College's Spring 1999 Campus Convocation. The event will take place February 11, at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. Following the convocation, McBride will sign copies of his book. The Color of Water, McBride's first book, was on the New York Times bestseller list more than a year. The book explores two lives: his mother's life as a daughter of a failed Orthodox rabbi who married a black Christian preacher and his own upbringing in the all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. After graduating from Oberlin and the Columbia School of Journalism, McBride worked as a staff writer for the Boston Globe, People Magazine and The Washington Post. McBride also plays saxophone and composes music professionally. He has won the 1996 ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award, the 1996 American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Development Award, and the 1993 Stephen Sondheim Award. He is currently writing the authorized autobiography of music legend Quincy Jones.