Flores Forbes is an urban planner, writer and former Columbia University administrator. He has written two books on race, radical urban politics and mass incarceration. His first book Will You Die With Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party was published in 2006 by Simon and Schuster and his most recent publication Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration was published in 2017 by Skyhorse Publishing and was awarded the American Book Award for non fiction in 2017.