Birmingham's Ashley M. Jones Named Poet Laureate of Alabama
Ashley M. Jones is named Alabama’s first Black poet laureate
Although the news is everywhere now, we are still delighted to share that Ashley M. Jones has been named Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama. She will serve a four-year term from 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 Alabama State Poet Laureate Selection Committee for this term included:
Dr. Charlotte Pence, Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama
Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, Alabama State University
Jay Lamar, former Executive Director of the Alabama Bicentennial Commission
Jason McCall, University of North Alabama
Alina Stefanescu, AWC Board Member / Recent Past President of the Alabama State Poetry Society
The selection committee chose Ms. Jones from among a stellar group of worthy nominees from all across the state. The committee was, itself, populated by an extraordinarily accomplished group of Alabama poets and literary arts advocates.
Given an extremely qualified, talented pool of nominees, the selection committee voted unanimously to advance to Ashley M. Jones to the Alabama Writer’s Cooperative membership as the official candidate.
Dr. Charlotte Pence chaired the selection committee, and she had this to say of the decision:
“The selection committee chose Ashley Jones for a number of significant reasons. Through her directing of Magic City Poetry Festival, teaching a range of ages in high school and college, as well as publishing multiple award-winning books, she has proven the ability to sustain multiple roles of educator, poet, organizer, and visionary. Jones is a nationally recognized poet who has a vision for advancing poetry in the state, as seen with her recent guest editorship position at Poetry magazine. What's more, her vision of poetry is inclusive of slam poetry, oral traditions, and outsider art. Jones is already an ambassador of poetry for the state and will elevate the visibility of all Alabama writers, including those who have been under-represented in the state's literary history. The committee praised her poetry's broad range that invites in the reader, along with an engaging tone and searing specificity. Jones's poetry is grounded in the real world, and does not shy from its complexities, complications, and challenges. In sum, her work engages Southern history and provides us with a new vision of how to interact within the arts and within our communities."
The poet laureate serves as the ambassador of poetry for the state. Roles and responsibilities include touring the state to make appearances at schools, universities, libraries and other state institutions, as well as give lectures, read poetry and hold workshops on a local and national level. This is a position of advocacy and community-building.
"In her poetry, Ashley is brilliant at knowing how to artfully 'follow the rules' of a given form or tradition and when to create her own more ingenious and elegant forms and rules. That's the way she leads, the way she teaches, and the way she advocates, too. We're so lucky she's going to be Alabama's chief advocate for poetry for the next four years."
AWC President T. J. Beitelman
MEDIA
“Ashley M. Jones selected as state’s new poet laureate” (Al.com)
“Meet Ashley M. Jones, the first Black poet laureate of Alabama” by Tira Davis (Bham Now)
“Birmingham teacher named first Black Poet Laureate of Alabama” by Sumner Harrell (ABC 33/40)