Renée Ashley is an American poet, and author of five collections of poetry, two chapbooks and a novel. Presently on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University and poetry editor of The Literary Review, Ashley's work has garnered several honours including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Pushcart Prize, and fellowships granted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts.
Several of her poems have been published in noted literary journals and magazines, including Poetry, American Voice, Bellevue Literary Review, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, and The Literary Review
Biography
Ashley was born in Palo Alto, California and raised nearby in Redwood City. Her father worked infrequently in a ball bearing factory and her mother was a PBX telephone operator and secretary; she was their only child. In interviews, she describes her parents as being an "anti influence" on her literary pursuitsâ€"mentioning that she was raised in a house that had no books and that her mother believed that "if you’re reading you’re not doing anything."
Ashley attended San Francisco State University and was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in three majors (in French, English, and Comparative Literature) in 1979. Subsequently, she earned a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University in 1981. Ashley came to poetry later in life and by chance. While attending a fiction writing seminar at a writer's conference at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, she was inspired to start writing poetry after "wandering away" and encountering a poetry reading by John Logan (1923â€"1987).
Ashley presently resides in Ringwood, New Jersey and is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University teaching in the university's graduate degree programmes for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing (2001â€"present) and Master of Arts in Creative Writing and Literature for Educators (2010â€"present). Since 1994, she has been on the faculty of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway, a large writers conference recently hosted by the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and Murphy Writing Seminars.
She previously taught creative writing at Ramapo College (1989â€"1993) in Mahwah, New Jersey and at Rockland Center for the Arts (1985â€"1995) in West Nyack, New York. For five years (1997â€"2002), she was assistant poetry coordinator for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, a not-for-profit philanthropic organisation that gives grants to environmental and social projects, educators and artists and operates a biennial four-day poetry festival in New Jersey that is the largest poetry event in North America. For several years, from 2007 until 2014, she was poetry editor of Fairleigh Dickinson University's literary quarterly The Literary Review.
Critical reception
Publishers Weekly reviewed Ashley's seventh book of poetry, Because I Am the Shore I Want to Be the Sea (2013), a series of prose poems on the subjects of "sex, courtship, fear, fatigue, loyalty, companion animals, and human regret" as "squared-off, almost blindingly vivid" and "committed to individual feeling, lyric, texture, emotional rawness, and authenticity."
Poetry in Penn Station
A six-line excerpt from Ashley's poem "First Book of the Moon" in The Revisionist's Dream (2001) were selected to used for a permanent installation by artist Larry Kirkland in New York City's Pennsylvania Station.
Carved in marble, this installation features excerpts from the works of several New Jersey poets (including Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and Amiri Baraka) and was part of the renovation and reconstruction of the New Jersey Transit section of the station completed in 2002.
Works
Poetry
Ashley has released five collections of poetry and two chapbooks.
- 1992: Salt
- 1998: The Various Reason of Light
- 2001: The Revisionist's Dream
- 2006: The Museum of Lost Wings (chapbook)
- 2009: Basic Heart
- 2010: The Verbs of Desiring (chapbook)
- 2013: Because I Am the Shore I Want to Be the Sea (Subito Press) ISBN 978-0-9831150-8-3
Fiction
- 2003: Someplace Like This (Permanent Press) ISBN 978-1-57962-090-5
Honors and awards
In recognition of her achievements in poetry and writing, Renée Ashley has earned the following awards and fellowships:
References
External links
- reneeashleyatwork.com (personal website)