Jarvis DeBerry worked for The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans from 1997 to 2019, first as a reporter and finally as an editorial writer and columnist for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Jarvis was part of the team of journalists that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. 

In 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2019 DeBerry was awarded first prize for column writing in the annual contest sponsored by the Louisiana/Mississippi Associated Press Managing Editors Association. In 2016 and 2019 he won the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Award in commentary. In 2019, he was awarded the prize for best column by the New Orleans Press Club. 

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A member of the NOMMO Literary Society in New Orleans, he has had poems published in "Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature," "Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam"and "The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South."   

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He was a part of the original cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Culture of Health Leaders and is working with two executives from the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies to raise awareness of the prevalence of trauma in the adolescent population in New Orleans.

 

He now writes for Cleveland.com 

He and his wife, Kelly,  have one daughter.