Ashley Ford

Ashley C. Ford is a writer and author whose debut memoir Somebody’s Daughter, published in 2021, received immediate and widespread critical acclaim, debuting at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir and Autobiography. Born in 1985 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ford grew up in circumstances defined by her father’s incarceration — he was serving a life sentence for rape committed before she was born, a fact she spent her childhood understanding only in fragments — and by her grandmother’s fierce, complex love.

Ford attended Ball State University in Indiana before moving to New York, where she built a career as a journalist, essayist, and interviewer. Her writing and conversations have appeared in BuzzFeed, Refinery29, ELLE, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and other publications. She hosted the podcast Untitled and was a co-host of aka with designer Kerby Jean-Raymond. Her interviews with artists and writers became known for their warmth, incisiveness, and emotional intelligence.

Somebody’s Daughter chronicles Ford’s childhood and adolescence — the poverty, the religious strictness of her upbringing, sexual abuse, and her complex relationship with a father she could only visit through prison glass — with a prose style that is direct, lyrical, and unburdened by sentimentality. The book is ultimately about how we construct our sense of self when the foundational stories are incomplete or painful, and about the possibility of choosing our own identities. It has been praised by readers and critics alike for its honesty and its refusal to offer false resolution.

Ford has served as a professor at Indiana University Bloomington and continues to write, speak, and build community among writers and readers. She is recognized as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary American memoir.