The two met briefly some 21 years ago, for a walk and talk that would eventually bring them back together to collaborate on a YA novel called Punching the Airthat integrates Yusef’s story, poetry and illustrations with Ibi’s powerful storytelling to create a novel in verse that speak powerfully to issues of equity, dignity, art as a form of therapeutic depression and restoration. She is also the author of Pride and My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, a New York Times bestseller, and it the editor of the anthology Black Enough. Her novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book.
Ibi Zoboi is a novelist and editor, born in Haiti, and raised in Brooklyn, she found a love of writing, and poetry and eventually pursued an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, before launching a career in journalism and then fiction. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama, among other honors.
Yusef is now a poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. Now known as the Exonerated Five, their story has been documented in the award-winning film The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon and in Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed series When They See Us. In 2002, after the young men spent years of their lives behind bars, their sentences were overturned. Yusef Salaam was just fifteen years old when his life was upended after being wrongly convicted with four other boys in the “Central Park jogger” case. Today is a special conversation, featuring two guests.
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