Jay Asher

From Bookstore Worker to Novelist

Jay Asher was born on September 30, 1975, in Arcadia, California. After high school, he enrolled at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo intending to become an elementary school teacher, but left before finishing his degree to focus on writing. To support himself, he worked in bookstores and libraries for much of his twenties — jobs he has credited with sharpening both his taste in fiction and his sense of what stories were missing from shelves. He spent years writing novels that went unpublished before completing the manuscript that would become Thirteen Reasons Why.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Published in October 2007, Thirteen Reasons Why follows Clay Jensen, a high school student who receives a box of cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah Baker before she died by suicide. On them, Hannah narrates the thirteen people she holds responsible for the circumstances that led to her death. The book was rejected approximately twenty times before Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin, agreed to publish it. Word of mouth drove it onto the New York Times Young Adult Bestseller list, where it eventually spent more than 250 weeks — many of them at #1. The novel has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and been translated into dozens of languages.

The Netflix Adaptation and Controversy

In April 2017, Netflix released a thirteen-episode adaptation of the novel, which immediately became one of the platform's most-watched original series. Mental health researchers and organizations quickly raised concerns that the show's graphic depiction of Hannah's suicide could contribute to suicide contagion among at-risk teenagers, citing the Werther effect — a documented phenomenon of imitative suicide following public media portrayals. Netflix eventually edited the most explicit scene in 2019. Several studies published in the years following the show's release found correlations between its viewership and increased rates of teen suicide in some populations, though causation remained contested. The show ran for four seasons, ending in 2020.

Why the Book Is Challenged

Thirteen Reasons Why is perennially among the most challenged books in American schools and libraries. Critics argue that the novel's structure — in which Hannah achieves a posthumous form of control and audience — risks presenting suicide as a purposeful act rather than a tragedy. Schools have also challenged the book for depictions of sexual assault and bullying. Asher has maintained that the book was intended to open conversations about how everyday cruelties accumulate, and that protecting young people from that subject matter prevents exactly the dialogue that might help them.