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April 28, 2025

A graduate of 51��������, where she received the Catherine Morrison Golden '55 P'80 Undergraduate Writing Fellowship, Ashley’s education laid a foundation for her distinctive approach to storytelling. She currently resides in New York City, where she continues to push boundaries with her writing, curating readings, and creating virtual diaries.

Your debut poetry collection, GLIB, was selected by Eileen Myles for the 2024 Changes Book Prize. How did this collection come together, and what themes or experiences were central to the work?

I started writing the manuscript when I was twenty and stuck indoors during the pandemic. My long-distance friend Kendall and I wanted to try writing a poem a day for a month. It was October, and I drove my mom’s cream Mini Cooper in circles trying to decipher if this would ever come to an end. It was a period of unrequited longing. California ennui.

Then I returned to Bennington and started thinking of my poems as dollhouses. Certain lines acted as scaffolding, details became furnishings. I had a collection of dioramas like Joseph Cornell. I knew I wanted to display them in a show, but I needed a year in New York after school to guide me to write the rest of what became GLIB. It felt like scrolling the internet. I was called glib whenever I made (slightly) ironic statements in a nonchalant manner, but I believe GLIB is driven by declaratives. I am no longer drifting toward conviction. I am sincere. GLIB is about the “I’s” I employ. The “I’s” I destroy, dissect, control. I am flirty and irreverent. Deadpan and oblique. I followed the fragments that came to me, interwoven, with one foot in reality and one foot in a dream, and no way of differentiating. 

Your writing is often described as "curating chaos." Can you explain what that phrase means to you, and how you approach creating or capturing that chaos in your work?

By “curating chaos,” I am curating the chaos of being alive in this era of Instagram feeds, doom scrolling, infinite playlists, and shopping malls through my poems. I create chaos in my poetry through my wordplay and line breaks, while causing it, playfully, in my everyday life. I might collage lines from various facets of my life and reactivate the chaos through each reading.

How did your time at Bennington influence your creative process and approach to writing?

I was lucky enough to work with faculty member Michael Dumanis, not only in workshops such as his amazing Image & Detail, but as an advisor who met with me weekly to discuss my new work. Having classmates who understood your work was a crucial part of workshop critique. I also enjoyed taking a variety of classes in my other favorite art forms, such as a music class on the Politics of Soul with Joe Alpar and Brian Michael Murphy, and a 16mm film class with John Crowe. Being away from the chaos of a city also helped with my creative practice and allowed for more editing and reflecting.

In addition to your poetry, you’ve worked as a curator and editor, including curating readings for The Brooklyn Rail. How does your experience as a curator influence your writing, and vice versa?

I started my literary and art magazine Wind-up Mice while at Bennington and also edited the Bennington Review and Silo, so I’ve always had a knack for curating artists and writers together. Assembling an event is always a mixture of vibes, similar tastes, and pure chance. I love the magic that comes with live readings that you can’t get solely on the page.

You’re currently working in literary journalism, music criticism, editing, and film. How do these different creative outlets intersect in your life, and how do they inform your writing?

I would love to pitch and find more editorial work, but for me, my various creative outlets are mainly separate. Sometimes longer pieces are meditations that expand on themes from my poetry, but film is another medium where I find poetry without the help of words. I maintain a monthly video series of “cut-ups” on my YouTube channel that document the world around me, and I am working on a one-sentence-long prose poem “novel.” I would also love to teach and explore the intersections of hybrid forms.