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.
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and educator whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among several others. A Family Thing is Ashley's debut full-length collection. She is also the author of the chapbooks CHARM(ed) (Fifth Wheel Press, 2024), black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current, 2023) and you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020). As cofounder of the Estuary Collective, Ashley strives to provide free to low-cost programming for femme-identifying BIPOC. When Ashley isn't teaching or working as the Chapbook Editor with Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter/X and Instagram @ae_thepoet. She lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and their cats—despite her not being a cat person. Ashley is Black before she is anything else.
"In Ashley Elizabeth's A Family Thing, devastating family secrets—from sexual assault to inheritance troubles—circle the speaker's family dynamic like a margarita's bitter salt rim. And in holding these secrets, the speaker is doubly robbed of her innocence, forced to be a sexual being first, then a peacemaking matriarch in the face of adults who failed to protect her. These poems fluctuate structurally, moving from longer pieces to two- or three-line bursts that punctuate this journey of reckoning with sharp breaths and gut punches. And in those waves, we are reminded that even though trauma is often a family affair, healing is a painful undertaking that must be done in exile." - Taylor Byas
"Audre Lorde wrote in Sister Outsider that there are 'so many silences to be broken' and such is the impetus that undergirds A Family Thing. As if cleaning a cloudy mirror, Ashley Elizabeth's speaker wipes away the glittery veneer of childhood–the ice cream cones, Easter bunny, bath time, and video games–to reveal a child psyche fractured by abuse at the hands of a sibling. In spare, unflinching lyrics, this poet refuses victimhood by naming the unspeakable and refusing the harrowing directive of 'don't scream/don't tell mom.' What is most compelling about these poems is the earnest narrator who, in spite of her trauma, yearns to believe in kinship ties and gives grace to the dead. With A Family Thing, we see the urgency of the survivor narrative and the transformative power of breaking our silence, no matter how painful it may be." - Rita Mookerjee
"Ashley Elizabeth's stunning book powerfully pulls the reader into her story of family history, trauma, betrayal, memory and loss. With lean, smooth lines, and an ear for voice and delivery, Elizabeth paints a striking, tender collection which resonates both on a visceral and intellectual level. It's a stunning debut! Well done, poet!" - Jose Hernandez Diaz
