Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, Editor-in-Chief of the DMQ Review, San José State University professor emerita, lecturer, blogger, and workshop presenter who has taught over 100 workshops. She was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, 2011-2013 and is author of five books. She has collaborated with both visual artists and musicians and was Assistant Editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, Black Lawrence Press, 2018. Her work is included in many anthologies. See Books.
Her poem, “4.6 Billion Years,” reprinted in The Inflectionist Review, was selected as part of the Lunar Codex project and landed at Mare Crisium on the Moon via Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander, March 2, 2025!
A book of essays, Going to the Moon, encompassing that experience and her lifelong practice of moon-watching is forthcoming July 14, 2026 from Duke University Press.
Listening to Mars, her fifth book, launched from Cornerstone Press, February 2024.
Her fourth collection, The Behaviour of Clocks was released April 1, 2019 from WordFarm Press.
Her book of poems, These Metallic Days was published in 2005 as part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series.
Her second chapbook, Her Name Is Juanita, was published as a special project by Kore Press in 2009, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the press.
Her first full-length collection, Some Odd Afternoon, was released February, 2010 by BlazeVOX Books. Selections were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011 by Jennifer K. Sweeney. A review by Dean Rader appears at Rattle online.
Two poems from 2010 issues of DMQ Review, which she edits, were chosen for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2011, by guest editor Kevin Young, fall 2011. The final issue, Best American Poetry 2025 features a poem from DMQ Review’s Fall 2024 issue.
Ashton was awarded a fellowship at Prospect Street Writers House and a Lucas Artist Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center as well as an Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship, Poetry, 2005. Besides nominations listed above, Ashton was also a 2006 and 2001 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a finalist for Best of the Net 2007.
She won First Prize in the 2014 Fish Flash Fiction Contest from Fish Publishing, Dublin, Ireland.
She was the founding director of the California Poets Festival in San Jose (2007 & 2008), the latter supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Writing across genres and specializing in short forms, Ashton has published in Orion; Sentence: a journal of prose poetics; and currently in such journals as Axon, the museum of americana, Brevity, Los Angeles Review of Books, Rattle, Poetry Flash, Poet Lore, and Zyzzyva. Work appears in the anthology A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry; the textbook anthology, An Introduction to the Prose Poem; in Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes; and in best-seller Poems for the 99 Percent among others. She has been a guest-blogger for the Best American Poetry blog.
Sally earned her MFA in Poetry and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, 2003, taught creative writing for ten years at her undergrad alma mater, San José State University, where she is now Faculty Emerita. She teaches privately in-person and online and has taught in programs such as Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, among others. A full list of readings is available and includes Moe’s Books, Berkeley for Poetry Flash; Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA; KGB Bar, NYC; and as a SJSU University Scholar.
See Calendar for recent events.
Ashton as Santa Clara County Poet Laureate was featured in a segment on NBC News. Her project, Poetry on the Move, selected five winning poems from Santa Clara County residents to place on car cards that ran thoughout the county on city buses and light rail cars.
Contact: sally.ashton@sjsu.edu
Facebook: Sally Ashton
The Moon Belongs to Everyone
A Muse Bouche 
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