Ashley Beresch

Ashley Beresch is a first-year MA student working as a consultant in the Willis Center for Writing and as a Franklin College research assistant under Dr. Rebecca Hallman Martini. She is also a collaborator with Amy Bonnafons on the Postpartum Storytelling Project, an initiative to promote intersectional postpartum care in the Athens community and beyond. 

Ashley's own research explores the entanglements of history, culture, and the environment that emerge in the texts of Southern women writers. She is particularly interested in the life and work of Lillian E. Smith, a writer, activist, and fellow Floridian/Georgian. Both a first-generation and non-traditional student, Ashley received her BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. She was awarded the 2025 Porter Fleming Literary Award in fiction and the 2024 Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize. Her writing appears in Roi Fainéant, Apple in the Dark, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first novel.