Education

B.S. Journalism, West Virginia University

 

About Prof. Ashley Craig

Prof. Ashley Craig wanted to tell you only that she was born a poor Black child in 1985 in West Virginia and that she currently lives in her own heart, gentle reader, but the higher-ups at the University of Memphis demanded more information and, sullenly, she provides.

Prof. Craig is a native of Charleston, West Virginia, and attended West Virginia University where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism with a concentration in news-editorial.

Prof. Craig is a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Navy Office of Community Outreach in Millington, Tennessee. When she was young, she wanted to join the Navy and fly jets, but poor eyesight, an inability to do complicated mathematics, and her dad put the brakes on that. Now she travels the country interviewing sailors to share their stories with their hometowns. She sometimes gets to see jets and that’s pretty neat.

Prof. Craig started as a freelance writer at one of her hometown newspapers, the Charleston Daily Mail, in the summer of 2008 and quickly moved into an internship and then a full-time role as the paper’s public safety reporter. She covered the night shift and wore many hats: public safety reporter, general assignment reporter, pinch hitter and weird animal writer. She was on that beat for seven years before moving to the city desk as the assistant city editor, a title she maintained when the Daily Mail merged with the Charleston Gazette, its across-the-hall rival, to form the Charleston Gazette-Mail. She was the night editor at the Gazette-Mail when she left the paper in 2023.

Prof. Craig started as an adjunct professor with the University of Memphis in the spring 2020 semester, which went pretty normal by her standards. She began her graduate studies at the University of Memphis in the spring 2021 semester and is continuing on her quest to become a master of the univers--ity. A master’s degree. She’s getting a master’s degree.

Prof. Craig is a volunteer with the Black Girl Hockey Club, which started as a group of Black women who wanted to watch ice hockey games together and has grown into an international nonprofit aimed at promoting anti-racism, increasing diversity and inclusivity at all levels of the sport, raising money for Black girls to play the game, and being loud at hockey games. She is a longtime fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins and apparently the Seattle Kraken hockey clubs.

Prof. Craig is an avid reader, writer and lover of movies and music. She does crafts and is very proud of her flower garden.