jabari asim

Jabari Asim is an author, journalist, poet, and playwright born in St. Louis, Missouri. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of The Crisis, the NAACP’s flagship publication. Previously, he was deputy editor at the Washington Post Book World, a post he held for nearly a decade. His most recent book is The N Word: Who Can Say it, Who Shouldn’t, and Why (2007), which The Los Angeles Times calls “a sharp-eyed musing on the history of the word and how it bears, or should bear, on a media-driven culture that is dangerously ahistorical, especially in matters of race.” Asim also edited the collection of essays, Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life (2002). His writing has appeared in Essence, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The International Herald Tribune, Emerge, and many other publications, and his poems, essays, and plays have been anthologized widely in collections including Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature (2000), The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literature (2000), and Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century (2002), edited by E. Ethelbert Miller. Called “perhaps the most influential African-American literary critic of his generation” by The Washington Post, Asim has also written for local theater companies and is author of several books for children and young adults. Asim lives in Maryland with his wife and five children.