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Born January 1987
Born and raised in Fort Wayne: Ashley C. Ford was born in Fort Wayne in January 1987 and raised here by her mother and grandmother. Her first book made the city a literary place in its own right: Somebody's Daughter, published 1 June 2021, is a memoir of her Fort Wayne girlhood — of growing up in poverty, in the long shadow of a father's imprisonment, and toward the writer she became. It was a New York Times bestseller and one of the most reviewed debut memoirs of its year.
Before and since the book, Ford built a national career in essays and criticism — writing for The Guardian, Elle, BuzzFeed and New York magazine among others, working as a host and educator, and writing publicly about race, the body and family. She is carried here, as every living person in this record is, on her public work only.
Sources:
- Wikipedia, "Ashley C. Ford" — the January 1987 Fort Wayne birth and Fort Wayne upbringing; the 1 June 2021 publication of Somebody's Daughter.
- Los Angeles Review of Books, review of Somebody's Daughter, 2021 — the Fort Wayne setting of the memoir.