Two UAB alumnae present Dark Salt Sisters book tour

Tina Mozelle Braziel and Ashley M. Jones are 2019 Alabama State Council on the Arts literary fellows, creative writing educators, alumnae of UAB and national award-winning poets.

1PosterTina Mozelle Braziel and Ashley M. Jones, alumnae of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will continue their joint book tour for Alabama’s bicentennial with their next stop at the Birmingham Museum of Art on Thursday, Feb. 28.

The event is open to the public. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear excerpts from the books by each author. Books and T-shirts will be available for purchase along with a book signing after the reading. The event will begin at 7 p.m.

Braziel’s book, “Known by Salt” examines class and gender, humankind and nature, and what it takes to mend those divisions and become whole.

Jones’ book, “Dark//Thing,” is a multifaceted work that explores the darkness/otherness by which the world sees black people. Jones stares directly into the face of the racism that allows people to be seen as dark things, as objects that can be killed, enslaved, oppressed and devalued.

“Together Ashley and I give voice to what it means to be female in the South, both black and white, urban and rural,” said Braziel, director of UAB’s Ada Long Creative Workshop in the UAB College of Arts and SciencesDepartment of English. “Perhaps more importantly, we offer our audience new ways to think about how humans create and develop identity.”

Braziel and Jones first met when Jones was a UAB University Honors Program student and interned for UAB’s Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for high school students.

“As the director of the workshop, I was delighted to work with such a talented and dedicated person,” Braziel said. “When Ashley’s second book, ‘Dark//Thing,’ was awarded the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry soon after ‘Known by Salt’ was awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, it made sense to organize a book tour together.”

Braziel says she and Jones have similar visions about education — so similar that Ashley named them “brain-sisters.”

“We’re friends; we have fun and work well together,” Braziel said. “As for me, I feel particularly fortunate to collaborate with Ashley because she has a wealth of experience from her previous tour of her first book, ‘Magic City Gospel.’”

Book tour schedule

  • Feb. 28  Birmingham Museum of Art — Birmingham, Alabama
  • March 7  Indiana University Purdue — Indianapolis, Indiana
  • March 16  Open Mouth Reading Series — Fayetteville, Arkansas
  • May 19  Sundress Reading Series — Knoxville, Tennessee
  • Sept. 10  Poets Read — Marietta, Georgia
  • Sept. 21  Rivertown Reading Series — Paducah, Kentucky