Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. “A Brief History of Seven Murders” was recently awarded the 2015 Booker Prize for Best English-Language Novel of the Year, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. in addition to receiving the OCM Bocas Novel Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Anisfield-Wolf and the Minnesota Prize. His first novel, "John Crow's Devil," was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It was the New York Times Editor's Choice. James lives in Minneapolis.