Author Jabari Asim will team up with Celadon Books as Literary Acquisitions Advisor, helping us to discover new voices and new talent and acquire works that will add depth and variety to our list. Beginning June 20, 2022, he will be assisting the Celadon team in our efforts to expand the reach of the books we publish.
Jabari is the author of seven books for adults, fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novel Yonder, which was published in January to glowing reviews (“Asim delivers a fresh, sweeping, must-read tale,” The New York Times). He has written twelve books for children and a book of poems, Stop and Frisk. Some of his other books are We Can’t Breathe, The N Word, and What Obama Means.
Jabari is currently the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow and Professor at Emerson College. He is both the Graduate Program Director of the MFA program and the Program Director for the James Baldwin Writers Colony. He will continue to hold these positions upon joining Celadon, as well as continuing his own writing.
Jabari has served as Editor in Chief of Crisis magazine—the NAACP’s flagship journal of politics, culture and ideas—and as an editor at the Washington Post, where he wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture and social issues. His writing has appeared in Essence, The Baffler, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Republic and many other places. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and, as a poet, playwright and writer, has been considered one of the most influential African American literary critics of his generation.