Sally Ashton is a Bay Area poet, teacher, and editor of the DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. Her chapbook, These Metallic Days, was released in 2005. She earned her MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. She earned her undergraduate degree from SJSU (2001) in English with a creative writing minor.  She won several Phelan awards and the Anne Lillis award while as SJSU.  She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Sally is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship, Poetry, from Arts Council Silicon Valley. She was  founding Director of the California Poets Festival 2007 and 2006 through Poetry Center San Jose. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Writers Chronicle, Mississippi Review, Dos Passos Review, failbetter.com, Another Chicago Magazine, River City, Poet Lore and Sentence, among other publications.

Sally continues to support literary activities at SJSU through her support of the MFA program and the student group - Poets and Writers Coalition. She was one of the readers for the SJSU Banned Books Week event in October 2007 - where a group did a public reading of Ginsberg's controversial poem Howl. She also participated in the PWC's public reading of Whitman's Song of Myself in April 2008, and the Favorite Poem project, reading as a featured poet.

In 2011, Ms. Ashton was named the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate for 2011-2013.

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