A sociologist who learned that the best data is a story told honestly.

Hi. I'm glad you found your way here.

I'm Ashley — a writer, sociologist, and mother living in Bend, Oregon. For most of my adult life, I've been obsessed with the same question: why do we become who we become?

A Ph.D. in sociology gave me one set of tools to answer that question. Fiction is giving me another — and I find, more and more, that the novel is where the truest answers live.

"If I can do it, so can you. I truly believe that — and I say it as someone who came to fiction sideways, through academic writing and long detours and a lot of fear."

On writing the novel

My debut novel, All She Gave to the Fire, lives at the intersection of contemporary fiction and emotional excavation.

The life around the writing

When I'm not at my desk, I'm with my two kids. My Cavalier King Charles Spaniel keeps me on a schedule I would not otherwise maintain.