A best-selling author and award-winning journalist, jonetta rose barras is a Washington, DC institution. She has written investigative reports, breaking news stories and opinion editorials for many of the media organizations in the nation’s capital: The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington City Paper and The Washington Times. She currently writes a weekly column for the online news site THEDCLIne.org.
In 2018, jonetta received a national fellowship from the prestigious University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and the Center for Child Well-Being—producing a groundbreaking print and broadcast series: Between Academic Success and Failure in D.C. Public Schools: Unresolved Trauma. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists D.C. Chapter Pro. In 2008, jonetta received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Trinity Washington University.
She is the author or editor of several books including, Discovering Me…Without You: Teen Girls Speak About Father Absence (Esther Productions Inc. Books 2020); Bridges: Reuniting Daughters and Daddies (Bancroft Press 2005), Black Board bestseller Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women (Ballantine 2000 hardcover, 2001 paperback), The Last of the Black Emperors: The Hollow Comeback of Marion Barry in the New Age of Black Leaders (Bancroft Press 1998), and The Corner Is No Place For Hiding (Bunny and the Crocodile Press 1996).
Her writings also have appeared in numerous anthologies including “Amazing Graces” (Paycock Press 2012) and “It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family, and Friends” (Broadway Books 2009).
jonetta’s feature articles, essays and opinion-editorials have appeared in USA Today, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Essence magazine, the New Republic, the American Enterprise magazine, the Washingtonian, and Crisis magazine.
