Ashley M. Jones
Ashley M. Jones is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2016), dark//thing (Pleiades Press, 2019), and Reparations Now! (Hub City Press, 2021). Her work has earned fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. She is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama, and she codirects PEN America’s Birmingham chapter. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
Reading List
Reparations Now, Reparations Tomorrow, Reparations Forever
using text from George Wallace’s 1963 Inaugural Address I. The Governor Speaks before I begin— patience. my heart, by which I mean my anxious country, will never forget the folks we beat: the little lady who couldn’t see too well, the blessed opposition, the vote— this debt, this duty to every man, woman, and […]
I Find the Earring That Broke Lose From My Ear the Night a White Woman Told Me the World Would Always Save Her
I remember: that earring made me feel so free, so full of beauty—the kind that you might notice. Beauty that could make my shoulders glow. I remember her face, alight with a devious curiosity in the porch light of the house party—that party in that city which slathered a film over its racism with clean […]