Ashley Elizabeth

About the Artist

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. Ashley's debut full-length collection, A Family Thing, is forthcoming from Redacted Books/ELJ Editions (August 2024). She is also the author of chapbooks you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020) and black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current, 2023). As cofounder of the Estuary Collective, Ashley strives to provide free to low-cost programming for femme-identifying BIPOC.When Ashley isn't teaching or working as the Chapbook Editor with Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and their cats. Ashley is Black before she is anything else.   

Artist's Statement

I ask the tough questions and decide on a semblance of an answer. I make sense of the world with my words and leave the written record in poetry, as a modern-day Herodotus, documenting our existence. I write in longing for a better world where we, the others, are understood instead of misunderstood, heard instead of hurt, and loved instead of outcasted. As a poet, I am a reader, writer, and storyteller who challenges the status quo while celebrating the ancestors and those who came before me and will come after me. With my work, I hope some of the harder conversations (such as those surrounding race, war, beauty, love, religion, school shootings, and state-sanctioned violence) happen. I use my written voice to shed light on the stories of the untold and offer lyric as a type of coping mechanism. However, in many aspects, language fails. There is no word to describe the trauma in our genes or how we feel when another Black person is unjustly murdered or when another school shooting happens or when women are not able to access life-saving healthcare. With my writing, I unearth untold stories. I give them the space they deserve. I let them breathe. I allow myself to experience the anger and trauma passed down through DNA. I refuse to be silent.