Ashley Mace Havird has published two chapbooks: Sleeping with Animals and Dirt Eaters, which won the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, and The Texas Review. She lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her husband, the poet David Havird.

Books by Ashley Mace Havird:

Other poems on the web by Ashley Mace Havird:
"Daughter, 14, with Scissors"
"Thanksgiving"
Two poems
"Hurricane: The Brac"
"Pollard’s Rock"

About The Garden of the Fugitives:

"From chinaberry trees and black widows to Pompeii and the Caymans, Ashley Mace Havird’s The Garden of the Fugitives explores a storied terrain where secrets are brought to life, characters strive and suffer, history and myth blend, ‘hawks razor’ and life swarms. You can feel the instructive shadow of Heaney in her eye and ear, as the adventure of language is always evident, but this is also the poetry of experience, observation and rumination. Rife with dramas of consequence and memorable images, The Garden of the Fugitives is an accomplished collection of poems which earns its way line by line and accumulates force and delight as it unfolds."
—R.T. Smith

"Writing close to the bone, Ashley Mace Havird stares unflinchingly at what most people turn away from; hers is a spare, honed language that refuses to embellish truth with ornament. The echoing music and vivid imagery of her poems carry powerful emotions, but with a fine restraint whose understatement intensifies their ironies, their truth—like a taut spring that releases its charge in the mind."
—Eleanor Wilner

"In poems that are smart, witty, and understated, Havird looks closely at the world and sees what’s there, not what’s supposed to be there. Yet, at the same time, her poems don’t so much describe our world as create a new world for us. Quite remarkable, really."
—John Dufresne