Ashley Elizabeth

Not that kind of fall, friends!

August 8, 2024 will be one of the biggest days of my writing career — My debut full length poetry collection, A Family Thing, will be out in the world. This book arises a sense of nervousness within me, but with this collection, I honor my inner child, the one who wished she had a voice. The one who wishes that she didn’t stutter when she talked. The one who needed protection but was unsure of how to get it.

In October-ish, my 3rd chapbook, red line, gives you some insight on how both being a student and being an educator (as well as the goings-on in both roles) have impacted my sense of self and my writing. This book is in memoriam to two students of mine who died in the Spring/Summer 2022. For me, that time is a blur. These two students, Athumani Brown and Tayon Bethea, deserved more time to bless others with their warm spirits. Instead, they are in the ground, and their friends, families, and other educators and I have begun to learn what it means to move through grief. While the chapbook itself is Pay-What-You-Can, I do ask you to donate to Athumani’s scholarship so other students have the opportunity to persue the educational goals Athu could not.

In November, my love letter to the place where I grew up will be published by fifth wheel press. CHARM(ed) depicts several aspects of Baltimore and how I grew into the city as it has swelled around me. This collection is doubly special as these are my first photography credits as well; each photograph in this book I took during undergrad as I wrote the first draft of this book, then called “A Dichotomy of Two Baltimores”. Thank you TJ Anderson III for believing in my writing and continuously pushing me as an undergraduate when few other faculty did.

Support this Black, Queer writer in any way possible this fall and forever. Buy a book, invite me to do a reading or lecture, leave a review where the books are sold, write a review and blog about it, like, comment & share on social media platforms, post about it, come to a reading, lift my voice as when you lift mine, you lift Athu’s and Tayon’s and every other scholar that I’ve had the pleasure of teaching alongside baby me.

Maybe just maybe I am speaking for the inner you too.