Ms. Barras has more than 20 years experience reporting and commenting on national social, political, and cultural trends. She is the author of Bridges: Reuniting Daughters and Daddies (Bancroft Press 2005), the 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 weekly column in the Washington Examiner newspaper is delivered to more than 200,000 households.

Washingtonian Magazine has rated Ms. Barras one of the Top 50 Journalists in Washington. She is a frequent contributor to the Outlook section of the Washington Post. Her writings also have appeared in the Washington Times, USA Today, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Essence magazine, the New Republic, the American Enterprise magazine, the Washingtonian, Crisis magazine (published by the NAACP), and Blueprint, published by the Democratic Leadership Council. She has also been quoted in front-page articles of The New York Times.

She has appeared as an analyst on such national programs and networks as NPR, CBS (60 Minutes), C-SPAN, CNN, PBS (This is America with Dennis Wholey and Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg), and Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, as well as such local stations as WUSA-TV (CBS-owned and -operated), NBC-TV 4 (the network owned and operated affiliate in Washington, D.C.), and WHUT-TV.