Author/Public scholar

A best-selling author, award-winning journalist, public scholar and cultural producer, 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 and beyond, including The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington City Paper, The Washington Times, Essence Magazine, The New Republic and The American Enterprise Magazine among others. She currently writes a weekly column for the online news site THEDCLIne.org.

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In 2024, with a grant from HumanitiesDC, jonetta curated African Americans and Children's Literature: A Historical Examination of the Role of Black Writers in DC in Building Canon and Fortifying Community.

The groundbreaking exhibition and symposium featured of the DC's and the nation's top authors of children's literature and cultural thinkers, including Kwame Alexander, Syndey Clifton, authors Tricia Elam Walker and Joy Jones, PBS Producer Jennifer Lawson, NPR/WAMU radio hosts Kojo Nnamdi, Black Classic Press Founding Publisher Paul Coates and award-winning filmmaker Shirikiana Gerima, who is also one-half of the founding team of Sankofa Video and Books Cafe. 

 

Soon after, jonetta launched the DC Literary History Center and Project which is expected to be a driving forcus for future studies of African American literature and writers in the nation's capital. 

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In 2021, jonetta received a major grant from SpotlightDC: Capital City Fund for Investigave Journalistm. She researched and wrote a five-part series--Still Broken: DC's Children Welfare System--

on the District of Columbia government's failure to protect thousands of infants and youth, who each year end up murdered, abused or neglected.  

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Three years before that series, in 2018, she 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.

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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). 

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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).

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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.