New for SDW Members: Poetry and Prayer with Ashley M. Jones
Good news!
I just added a new recording link for a 53-minute video to the SDW Members Resources page. This video is from a Poetry and Prayer session with Ashley M. Jones, and it is phenomenal.
Enjoy!
Ashley M. Jones 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. Jones has been featured on news outlets including Good Morning America, ABC News, and the BBC. 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, and her collection, REPARATIONS NOW! was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. 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 University Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. In 2022, she received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
I posted an important SDW Membership Announcement on April 17, 2023.
You can read more here.
Some portions of the SDW Membership are currently paused.
The SDW Monthly Membership cost is currently $15/month until August 1st (tentatively) and includes access to all SDW Solo Writing Retreat Guides and the SDW Online Course.
Here’s what’s continuing while some SDW offerings are paused:
—SDW Daily Nourishment Emails
—SDW Solo Writing Retreat Guide Resources for Members (Available via SDW Membership at $15/mo)
—SDW Online Course and Resources (Available via SDW Membership at $15/mo with new resources dropping weekly!)
—Limited one-on-one Spiritual Direction Sessions
—Solo Writing Retreat public website posts/Call for pitches from guest contributors coming soon!
Here’s what will be paused until August 1st(ish):
—SDW Co-Writing Sessions
—Online and In-Person Four-Hour Retreats
—Online SDW Conversations