Ashley Mace Havird grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina. Her debut novel, Lightningstruck (Mercer University Press, 2016), won the 2015 Ferrol Sams Award and was named an Editor’s Choice by the Historical Novel Society. Current Poet Laureate of Caddo Parish, Louisiana (2018-2020), Ashley has published three collections of poems, including The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press, 2014), which won the 2013 X. J. Kennedy Prize. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry, and Nasty Women Poets, An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. She lives with her husband, the poet David Havird, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Visit her at www.ashleymacehavird.com [2].