Quassan T. Castro is a journalist, columnist, entertainment and culture critic, poet and author. Quassan hails from the streets of East Orange, New Jersey.  His work ranges from personal essays, fiction, poetry, music and book reviews, celebrity interviews and culture writing.  Quassan has taught writing and literature. Quassan is social media manager for leading feminist, intellectual and acclaimed author, Dr. bell hooks.  

Quassan is an entertainment and news fanatic.  With his first personal essay, “My Father, The No-Show,” published at the age of seventeen, Quassan became one of the youngest male writers to write for a national magazine, Essence Magazine. His works have been featured in top national magazines that include Essence Magazine, Essence Magazine Online, Heart and Soul Magazine Online, BET (Black Entertainment Television), Black Enterprise and Jet Magazine. He has interviewed celebrities from Mary J. Blige, Nia Long, Kevin Hart to J. Cole and Shirley Gibson, Mayor of Miami Gardens. His style of interviewing has made him a favorite amongst celebrities and dignitaries. 

“Made of Shade,” is his popular weekly column blog where he reaches millions of Jet Magazine readers online with his entertainment and culture critiques. Quassan’s work has published in several college literary anthologies including The Sundance Writer: A Rhetoric Handbook, Sundance Choice Composition and Structured Reading. Heavy weight writers included in some of the literary anthologies featuring Quassan have been Alice Walker, Tony Brown, Maya Angelou, Virgina Woolf, George Orwell, Nikki Giovanni, Naomi Wolf and Martin Luther King.