Lisa Ashley
Lisa Ashley is a Pushcart Prize nominee who descends from Armenian genocide survivors. She has spent many years listening to, and supporting, incarcerated youth. Poems can be found in Willows Wept Review, Juniper, Blue Heron Review, The Healing Muse, Amsterdam Quarterly, Gyroscope, Thimble, Last Leaves , and others.
She earned a BA in journalism from the University of Montana School of Journalism and a Master of Divinity from Seattle University. Oubliettes of Light is her first collection and was a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award, 2024.
Lisa writes in her log home among the firs on Bainbridge Island, WA, having found her way there from rural New York by way of Montana and Seattle. She navigates her life and garden with physical limitations, help from her husband, and unlimited imagination. Her garden and fir grove provide abundant joy and solace as she observes the dancing bees and acrobatic hummingbirds in the air and on the page.
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Excerpt from Oubliettes of Light
Moss, Dandelion
Sphagnum moss is resilient, able to return to life after drying to brown dust, litter of pain and loss. The moss greens in the wet yard, each spring returning to life, a rhythm I count on. I look for a garden pocket where I can flourish, a place to visit across the seasons, witness change, the comings and goings of plants, creatures, blooms, a place where my curiosity twirls. I want to scatter seeds like the dandelion blowball— wishes carried on the wind, achenes that fly.
