Writing solves a lot of my problems. It is my vent for a machine capable of great feats but that is constantly plagued by annoying glitches. That comes from being the product of intelligent parents who gave me equal parts of brains, sarcasm, stubbornness, and unbridled emotion. My mother, Angela Jasper, has been a teacher and administrator in the District of Columbia Public School system for more than 27 years. My father, Melvin Jasper, Jr., is a graphic artist turned real estate appraiser and entrepreneur. They have been divorced for the better part of 12 years but my Mom still keeps the name. My father has been remarried for almost 8 years and has two daughters, my sisters Annia and Imani.

I am the only child of my parents and one who was born with strong imagination. I once had a knack for science, having won a series of awards in my grade school years. But it turned out that I was awful in math, which quickly eliminated science as a serious career choice. I wrote my first short story at 9, a tale about a boy with a pet wolf and jade dagger fighting evil in a forest. I've always wanted to be a hero. Five years later I wrote a 140-page short novel called The Sharpe Papers that's so awful even my parents were never allowed to read it.

I became vice president and later president of my junior high school student government. I staged a protest against the school principal and earned the political respect of my peers. But by the time I got to high school I'd spent so much time writing and reading on my own that I lost the taste for traditional academic achievement. So I crammed for my tests, talked on the phone until dawn with girls who only wanted to be my friend and spent my lunch hours reading books, writing, or trying to hang with the rest of the fellas. And I still made the honor roll every quarter.

I grew up in Washington, DC during its "murder capital of the world" period. Gunshots were a sound effect in my dreams and a serious reality during parties on the weekend. My mother nearly had to take a Valium every time she let me use the car on Friday and Saturday nights. But whenever there was a fight, when two crews faced off because of a girl or an arbitrary bump of the shoulder, I had an uncanny ability to be nowhere near it. To round out high school I gave the worst performance ever in the men's indoor 1600. I was lapped repeatedly and jogged the track in abysmal form while being humiliated by former classmates in the stands. Each of them represented a specific period in my 13-year public school tenure. Two weeks later I sprained my ankle while walking the dog and retired from track forever.

In the 9th grade I joined the cast of BET's Teen Summit and spent four years worth of Saturdays adding my opinion to the pile about issues that affected African American youth. Didn't get a lot of fan mail but I got an internship that officially started my writing career. I went to YSB Magazine almost everyday from 1991 to 1993 and contributed more articles than I thought was humanly possible.

From Benjamin Banneker Academic high school there I went to Morehouse College and spent four years studying writing and English literature. I had chosen a department where most of the students were majoring because they heard it looked good on law and grad school applications. I graduated and couldn't find a job in my field. So I became a bookseller at the Buckhead Atlanta Barnes and Noble and was placed in charge of the fiction section. I spent more time memorizing bylines than I did helping customers. Then I went to work at Comp USA down the road because they paid more, a whopping $7 an hour. I did the same exact thing there, except that in a computer store there were no good books to read.

Through the course of my adolescence and adulthood my work appeared in YSB, Thrasher, Rappages, VIBE, XXL, Atlanta Magazine, The Charlotte Observer (where I survived a gruelling internship,) Upscale (where the editorial department is housed in the same building with a hair care chemicals plant), Newsday, The Village Voice, Essence, CODE, and on Amazon.com, Africana.com, and Bet.com. I am also author of a novel called Dark, an urban tale that chronicles the story of a young black male who isn't me. I've never killed anyone and most of my friends comes from families that are far wealthier than my own.

Writing solves a lot of my problems. It is my exhaust vent. It helps me understand life. It also helps me to represent who I am and more importantly what I have to say. There's a lot more I could say about Kenji Jasper. But none of it is that important. Everything you need to know is in the words on the page.

Dark
the novel by Kenji Jasper