In this episode, Clifford Brooks and Michael Amidei interview poet Ashley M. Jones.
Ashley M. Jones (https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/) is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow.
She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series.
Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, Quiet Lunch, Poets Respond to Race Anthology, Night Owl, The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, pluck!, Valley Voices: New York School Edition, Fjords Review: Black American Edition, PMSPoemMemoirStory (where her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016), Kinfolks Quarterly, Tough Times in America Anthology, and Lucid Moose Press’ Like a Girl: Perspectives on Femininity Anthology. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She was an editor of PANK Magazine.
Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press.
She won the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press, and she is the 2019 winner of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Jones is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and a 2020 Alabama Author award from the Alabama Library Association. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020.
She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty at the Converse College Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine.
The Aesthetics Of Gratitude (Interview with Neal Francis)
The Audience Creates The Performer (Interview with Mario "The Maker Magician")
The Choice To Live As A Poet (Interview with Faylita Hicks)
A Musical Legend Speaks (Interview with Alain Johannes)
Finding Poetry In The Mists Of Experience (Interview with Angela Dribben)
Awakening Of The Shovel Guitar (Interview with Justin Johnson)
How A Powerhouse Finds The Time (and Energy) To Create (Interview with Rebecca Evans)
Never Turn Back (Interview with Christopher Swann)
The Pursuit Of Craft (Interview with Angel Snow)
Songs Of Creative Dedication & How Fires End (Interview with Marco Rafalà)
The Passion & Wit Of R.J. Jeffreys
Surrender Your Gift (Interview with Casanova Green Pt. 2)
Exploring Of The Creative Feminine
The New Psalmist (Interview with Clay Matthews)
Trauma Forged Into Art (Interview with Tianna G. Hansen)
The Embrace Of Despair (Interview with Dr. Samantha Rose Hill)
Rhythm Hymns (Interview with Tyree Daye)
The Tender Words Of Zoe Fishman
Bone Chalk & Prison (Interview with Jim Reese)
New Year, Who Dis?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
50 Tastes Of Gray
Dear Alice | Interior Design
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
The Story of Mankind
Just So Stories
The Magnus Archives
The Moth