Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of two books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. My Name is Revenge was longlisted for 2020 Davitt Awards, shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards, and a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award.
Ashley’s writing appears in Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Big Issue, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings, the Canberra Times, and more.
She is the co-host of James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health.
Her Armenian travel memoir was shortlisted for the 2018 Impress Prize for New Writers and the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award, and received a 2015 Varuna PIP residency.
Ashley is an award-winning speaker. She’s appeared at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Story Club, Little Fictions, the National Young Writers’ Festival and Noted Festival, and is a Moth StorySLAM winner.
She has a decade of experience in teaching and curriculum design, working with children and adults. She completed a Master of Research in creative writing and has previously lived and worked in Canada, South Korea, Peru and Mexico.
Visit her writing portfolio for more.
Full of Donkey
The Armenian language lacks the a sound ‘Ashley’ requires. (This pronunciation issue is why flash mobs in Armenia become the rather more intimidating ‘flesh mobs.’) So when she spent two months travelling through Armenia, everybody called her Eshley. Unfortunately, esh means donkey, and the suffix -li means full of. Ashley was, in Armenian, Full of Donkey.
Now Full of Donkey is where she posts updates on her work, events, and life with chronic fatigue syndrome.
