Ashley Avery - Poet, Activist, Writer

Ashley Avery is a feminist writer, poet and advocate living in KJIPUKTUK (Halifax).

She holds a BA in Women’s Studies from MSVU and previously completed a Diploma in Social Service Work in Toronto. She is a former member of the Hali Slam team and a competitor at the 2017 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Her visual poetry installation titled “Elements of Rape Culture” was featured at the Mount Saint Vincent community art gallery and in 2018 she was commissioned to collaborate with a lucky director (read: myself) on a docupoem titled “How Will You Honour Your Land?” for the Lunenburg Documentary Film Festival.

Ashley has performed her poetry at numerous protests and community events across Nova Scotia. She uses spoken word as a form of activism to bring injustice to centre stage and speak truth to power. She is the former women and youth services coordinator at a local non-profit serving criminalized women. She is now the access to justice coordinator at the newly formed Access to Justice and Law Reform Institute of Nova Scotia where she is managing the #TalkJustice initiative— a community engagement strategy centring the voices of the public in the justice system and giving community a platform to share their stories with the ultimate goal of improving their experiences.

When she isn’t snuggling her dog Jaxon or driving her daughter to extracurricular activities, she is probably watching Netflix or plotting her next move.

In this episode, we talk about how everything, poetry, #TalkJustice and a lot more.

Check her out @_a.avery_