Acclaimed author Clifford Thompson writes about jazz, film, literature and American identity, and he received a Whiting Writers' Award for nonfiction in 2013 for his book Love for Sale and Other Essays (Autumn House Press). 

He lives on a pretty, tree-lined street in Brooklyn in a building that went up in the 1920s and while he has books everywhere, the majority of them live in four tall brown wood shelves placed against the wall in his living room.