poet & librarian
I’m an academic librarian and poet in Memphis, TN.
I’ve published poems in excellent journals and participated in the lit world in many ways. I coordinated and hosted the Impossible Language reading series in Memphis, TN from 2013 to 2017. On a good day, I’m working on a full-length book of poems. On any other day, I’m critiquing genre norms by watching a lot of tv.
Bright Along the Body, chapbook, Dancing Girl Press, 2017
Cover art and design by April Pierce.
Screen Door Review: “Every Day is Work,” “Risk Tolerance Assessment Logic,” “The End of the World“
Just Place: “Pelahatchie Bay,” “Midtown Lockdown“
Heavy Feather Review: “Our Poetica”
Dialogist: “Erasure“
Southern Women’s Review: “Reckoning for a Body,” “Undone Light”
Yemassee: “Say anything but,” “Hunger Strike”
Poet Lore: “To the Early 2000’s Internet, for Introducing Me to a Violator,” “National Trauma”
Doubleback Review: “If there is a place for bodies to be safe” (reprint from Public Pool, now defunct)
Scalawag: “Dear Sam“
Fugue: “On the Whole“
The Boiler: “Reflection on When I Heard You Were Sober,” “Judith Beheading Holofernes“
Rogue Agent: “Ekphrasis“
Ghost Proposal: “Woman Found Chained in Metal Container,” (with Emma Bolden)
Nightjar Review: “The New Year” (Nominated for Best of the Net)
The Fem: “In the Event of Conception“
About Place, SOUTH Issue: “Memphis Hustle III“
Watershed Review: “The Barn,” “To My Husband“
Public Pool (defunct): “If there is a place for bodies to be safe,” “Woman in Bathroom”
The Literary Review: “Blessing for the Use of New Houses“
Heron Tree: “Advice I Would Have Given Myself, If I Had Known”
Noble / Gas Qtrly: “Poem That Can’t Be Another Poem,” “Poem Taking Advantage of Tennessee,” “Poem with an Open Window,” “Memphis Hustle I”
Bear Review 2.2: “Self-Portrait with Arson,” “Self-Portrait with Fur”
Bone Bouquet: “Transition, with Bells and Leaves”
Academy of American Poets: “what you have left” / featured on Chapter 16
Superstition Review: “Seven of Swords, Reversed,” “sorry about the poem with feathers”
burntdistrict: “Green Tongue,” “Something the Previous Owners Never Told Us”
Squaw Valley Review: “Text Message Photographs”
Smartish Pace : “Third Summer,” “I’m From Nowhere”
Tinderbox Poetry Journal: “Rabbit Fever,” “Wildflowers Poetica”
District Lit: “what the bed thinks about is the unswept floor” (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Rock & Sling: “Red Bird Elegy,” “Poem with a Line by Andrew Freiman”
Midway Journal: “Twin Cell”
THRUSH Poetry Journal: “Starlings”
Dunes Review: “Suffer Cure”
Review / My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, by Jenn Shapland: College & Research Libraries
Guest Blog, Superstition Review: The Privilege and Anxiety of Catharsis
Review / Stranger, by Adam Clay: Memphis Flyer
Memphis Scene Report (w/Danian Jerry): realpants.com
Catching Up with Ashley Roach-Freiman, Tinderbox Poetry Journal
Workshop: Risk and Restraint: Writing Poems Out of Vulnerability, Southern Literary Festival
Guest: Classroom visiting poet, 8th grade English, Power Center Academy
Writer in Residence: Crosstown Residency Program (watch my Pecha Kucha)
Judge – Poetry Contest: Chrysalis, the literary and arts magazine of Ferrum College in Virginia
Featured: Nightjar Review
Featured: The Dean’s List on Make Memphis blog
Writer in Residence: Firefly Farms, Sundress Academy for the Arts
Collaborating Artist: Words Matter, Crosstown Arts
Contributor interview (w/ editor Rebekah Bresee): Rock & Sling blog
Squaw Valley Community of Writers poetry workshop participant, 2014
Impossible Language Reading Series, 2013 to 2017
The Pinch Literary Journal – 2014 – 2016
Managing Editor – Issue 36.1
Assistant Managing Editor – Issue 35.2
Senior Poetry Editor – Issue 35.1
Senior Poetry Editor / Art Editor – Issue 34.2
I bring my background in poetry writing to instruction and librarianship, creative energy that allows me to design engaging, informed, and user-friendly curriculum. I believe in working with students’ innate curiosity and use backward design, universal design for learning (UDL), the philosophy of critical librarianship, and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to make lesson plans to meet all students where they learn. I deeply love my job.
James E. Ward Instruction Award – Tennessee Library Association, 2018
Scott Cohen Torchbearer Award – WeTALC, 2023
Together in the Same (Zoom) Room: Building Campus Community Around First-Year Writing and Information Literacy Through a Collaborative Online Forum – The Journal of Creative Library Practice, Jan 2023
BEAM Me Up: Teaching Rhetorical Methods for Source Use and Synthesis – Communications in Information Literacy 15:2
“Square Peg, Round Hole: Big Picture Planning and the Opportunities and Limits of Design Thinking” – The Journal of Creative Library Practice
“Opening Our Minds: Two Early Career Librarians. Two Roundtables. Where To From Here?” (w/ Joseph Winberry) – Tennessee Libraries 69.2
“BEAM Me Up: Considering Usefulness for Source Synthesis” – Library Instruction Tennessee (LIT) conference, 2019
“Opening Our Minds: Two Early Career Librarians. Two Roundtables. Where To From Here?” – with Joseph Winberry, Tennessee Library Association Annual Conference, 2019
“Stand and Be Counted: Libraries Facilitating Voter Engagement” – Panelist, with Holly Hebert, Kevin Dixon, Pamela Johnson, Chris Hall, & Amber McKee, Tennessee Library Association Annual Conference, 2019
“NEDtalks: Lightning Talks in the Library” – with Brannen Varner, Tennessee Library Association Conference, 2018
“Making It Work Online: Collaborating to Create an Online Information Literacy Portal” – with Brannen Varner, Tennessee Library Association Conference, 2018
“Use Your Words: Thing-Explaining Library Lingo” – with Brannen Varner, The Collective, 2018
“Looking for the Picture in the Frame: The ACRL Framework in Practical Library Instruction” – with Sylvia Page and Becca Decker, Tennessee Library Association Conference, 2017
Library Instruction Together (LIT), Steering Committee member
See my LinkedIn profile here.
Email / ashleymroach (at) gmail (dot) com
Violator was a semifinalist in the 2023 Driftwood Press Open Reading period!
Violator was longlisted for the 2022 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize!
Violator was a finalist in the 2021 Birdcoat Quarterly Ghost Peach Press Prize!
Violator was named a semi-finalist in the 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press!
If you want to host or read with me, contact me at ashleymroach (at) gmail (dot) com
Reading with Erin Slaughter at Novel for the launch of I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun
2019 Southern Literary Festival: Risk and Restraint: Writing Poems Out of Vulnerability Workshop
Center for Writers Literary Salon: w/ Emma Bolden
Open Mouth Poetry Festival Pre-Festival Feature (in collaboration with True Lit Fest): w/Emma Bolden
Impossible Language Reading Series relaunch
Crosstown Arts Residency Pecha Kucha
Writers Resist
Open Mouth Poetry Festival: w/ Caitlin Scarano
Sundress Reading Series: w/ Heather Dobbins and Christian Anton Gerard
Third Man Books: w/ Kendra DeColo, Tara Mae Mulroy, and Sheree Renée Thomas
Trobar Ric reading series w/ Maggie Woodward, Chris Hosea, & Douglas Piccinnini)
Ruby Slipper Fringe Fest: The Memphis Lyrics w/ Heather Dobbins
Open Mouth Reading Series: w/ Aaron Brame
Turn Row Book Co.: w/ Michael Morse & Richard Boada
Mid-South Book Festival: Student Workshop Wrap-Up
Bastet Quartet Reading Series
AWP Seattle: Off-site reading with The Pinch
Ashley Roach-Freiman 