Neri is the author of Yummy: the Final Days of a Southside Shorty, a Coretta Scott King honor book, and the Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award winner for Chess Rumble, a free verse novella. Surf Mules and Ghetto Cowboy, which won the Horace Mann Upstander Award, are two of his novels. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance, Antioch University, the International Reading Association, the American Library Association, the Junior Library Guild, and the National Council for Teachers of English have all recognized his work. Neri has worked as a filmmaker, animator, teacher, and creator of digital media. He resides on the Gulf Coast of Florida and writes full-time.