Work samples

  • CHARM(ed) excerpt

    Welcome home, hon. CHARM(ed) chronicles Baltimore life and grapples with the idea of home and belonging. It also celebrates a city with deep roots, history, and culture—particularly the food. With the added element of photographs, this collection blends visual art and written word as part love letter, part critique of the goings-on in Charm City.

    Available for Purchase
  • black has every right to be angry

    This poetry collection tells stories for those who can’t. Those who are scared. Those who are silenced. Those who need an extra push. black has every right to be angry evinces the notion that Black people—and Black women, especially—are angry, and that this anger is more than justified. Skillfully weaving bloody history lessons, the Black body as scientific experiment, and the contemporary world of police violence, systemic racism, and feminism into the narrative of modern society, Ashley Elizabeth’s gut-punching poems allow space for thought, remembrance, and reflection on the lives taken too soon and what we can do to fight the power.

    Available for Purchase
  • red line

    .. the way loss is woven though red line is a testament to how grief weaves though our lives, and then in grief's transformative nature, a stark realization: "three hours later, student A is dead/and all I can think of instead of crying/is hugging the ones left." Every turn and angle grief reveals and guides, but so too does Ashley Elizabeth do that herself -- guiding and directing us into the heart of grief: love. 

    Available for Purchase

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About Ashley

Baltimore City   Baltimore City Station North AE District   Baltimore City Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts and Entertainment District  

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. Ashley is the author of A Family Thing (Redacted Books/ELJ Editions, 2024) and four chapbooks, including CHARM(ed) (Fifth Wheel Press, 2024). When she isn't teaching, reading, or writing, Ashley works as Chapbook Editor at Sundress Publications. She lives… more

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you were supposed to be a friend

Friendships between men and women don’t always last forever… not without someone wanting more. At least, it’s harder not to. It is easy to fall for someone you spend most of your time talking to. This chapbook explores when a relationship turns from friendship to friends with benefits to someone falling in a love that may not be reciprocated.Ten years is a long time to intertwine two souls. From middle school to early adulthood, we survived a lot. For having such searing physical and emotional chemistries, our communication skipped heartbeats with lies and potholes. We’ve been friends for too long. Of course feelings got in the way. Of course I fell for you, and of course I lied about it. Who wouldn’t? I lost you anyway. Published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2020

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    black has every right to be angry

    This poetry collection tells stories for those who can’t. Those who are scared. Those who are silenced. Those who need an extra push. black has every right to be angry evinces the notion that Black people—and Black women, especially—are angry, and that this anger is more than justified. Skillfully weaving bloody history lessons, the Black body as scientific experiment, and the contemporary world of police violence, systemic racism, and feminism into the narrative of modern society, Ashley Elizabeth’s gut-punching poems allow space for thought, remembrance, and reflection on the lives taken too soon and what we can do to fight the power.

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    A Family Thing

    In her thought-provoking debut full-length collection, A Family Thing, Ashley Elizabeth invites the reader into the depths of her childhood, marked by tragedies including childhood sexual assault, ailing parents, and the loss of innocence. With raw vulnerability, she guides the reader throught the corners of her past, with language that is as haunting as it is cathartic. This collection navigates pain, resilience, and healing through reflecting on what she has lost but also what she has gained: a new-found sense of self and solace despite unimaginable adversity from the people she cared about the most but couldn't care for her. Ashley Elizabeth uncovers the unspeakable and puts it to rest.

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    red line

    CHARM(ed)

    bite-sized