“Growing up when we had to read poetry at school, I never really liked poems that I had to fight with to get any meaning out of,” Jones said. Her poetry is what she calls “accessible.” Much of her poetry deals with race, gender and her personal life. “I recently found the notebook, and I have poems in there as well I have no recollection of those poems, but apparently I was writing poems back then.”Īs she got older, she began writing more because it was the easiest way for her to get her point across, she said. “I kept what I called a spy journal,” Jones said. Jones, who is from Birmingham and attended ASFA, said she first started writing when she was 8 years old after seeing the movie Harriet the Spy. “Winning an award like that made me feel like my voice matters in this nation.” “Winning that award solidified my desire to keep being a writer because sometimes the world is telling you that being an artist is useless and doesn’t make you any money because people aren’t listening anyway,” Jones said. She is also one of the 2015 winners of the Rona Jaffe Writing Award which is a national award given to six women every year for creative writing. She is a poet, teacher at Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and University of Alabama at Birmingham and an editor for literary magazine, Pank. In this assured debut, you'll find why 'gold is laced in Alabama's teeth.' In the ghosts and the grits, this collection speaks to Jones' generation and beyond: 'Let me wash you in Alabama heat / and tell you who you are.' Magic City Gospel is a book of personal, political, and cultural history, whose red dirt stained pages offer a fresh and unvarnished gaze on Birmingham, Alabama, and America.The Birmingham Times Ashley Jones (Provided photo)Īt age 26, Ashley Jones already has an impressive résumé. From De Soto's 'discovery' of Alabama to George Wallace's infamous stance in the schoolhouse door, to the murders of black men like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner in modern America, Jones weaves personal history with the troubled, triumphant, and complicated history of Birmingham, and of Alabama at large. Jones takes readers on an historical, geographical, cultural, and personal journey through her life and the life of her home state. In traditional forms and free verse poems, 2015 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award-winner Ashley M. Magic City Gospel is a love song to Birmingham, the Magic City of the South.

Magic city gospel