Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), and her poems and essays appear journals and anthologies, including CNN and the Academy of American Poets, among many others. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel (2017), won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry. Jones currently lives in Birmingham, AL, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Find more online at ashleymichellejones.wordpress.com/

Tina Mozelle Braziel won the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for her book Known by Salt (2019). Her chapbook, Rooted by Thirst, came out in 2016. Her individual poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Southern Humanities Review, PMSpoemmemoirstory (where her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize) and other journals. In 2017, she served as an artist-in-residence at Hot Springs National Park. She earned an M.F.A in Poetry from the University of Oregon, an M.A. in Poetry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a B.A. in Intercultural Studies at the University of Montevallo. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building by hand. Find more online at https://tinamozellebraziel.com/about/

Jones and Braziel will also lead a workshop for up to 10 students immediately following their reading. Contact Pell City English instructor and SKD Advisor Jacob Melvin for details and to register, jmelvin1@jeffersonstate.edu.