Asha Bandele

Asha Bandele is the coauthor of the 2018 New York Times-bestselling memoir When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, with Patrisse Cullors. Ms. Bandele first attained recognition when she penned her 1999 debut, the award-winning The Prisoner’s Wife—a powerful, lyrical memoir about a young black woman’s romance and marriage with a man who was serving a 20-to-life sentence in prison. She is a journalist who has published pieces in The New York Times, Vibe, and Ebony, a former features editor for Essence magazine, and  the author of two collections of poems, the memoir Something Like Beautiful, and the novel Daughter. Ms. Bandele is a senior director at the Drug Policy Alliance.