The University of Missouri is pleased to announce the 2022 keynote speaker for the Annual MLK Day of Celebration, Ashley M. Jones.
Ashley M. Jones is the poet laureate of the Alabama (2022-26). She holds a master of fine arts in poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press, 2019) and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press, 2021).
Her poetry has earned her numerous awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the silver medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award.
She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others.
Currently, she teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in the Low Residency MFA at Converse University. Jones co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine.
Learn more about our keynote speaker by visiting: www.ashleymjonespoetry.com.