Roxanna Asgarian

Roxanna Asgarian is an American journalist and author specializing in criminal justice, child welfare, and family separation. She has written for Texas Monthly, The Marshall Project, ProPublica, and other investigative publications. We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America (2023) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The book examines the tragic case of the Hart family—six Black children adopted by two white women who killed them by driving off a California cliff in 2018—as a lens for examining the systemic failures of the foster care and child welfare systems in the United States, particularly as they affect Black families. Asgarian received her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Houston. Her reporting has contributed to policy discussions about child welfare reform and racial inequity in family court systems. She lives in Houston, Texas. The book was praised for its compassionate and rigorously reported account of how systemic racism in child welfare agencies has led to disproportionate separation of Black children from their families. It is considered essential reading in discussions of family court and foster care reform.