Ashley Noelle Ver Beek

Ashley Noelle Ver Beek (she/her/ella) is a multidisciplinary creator and question-asker. Her roles as writer/musician/scholar are co-constitutive, constantly informing each other, and would not exist in the same way without the others. Interconnectedness underscores all we encounter.

Her writing, relationships, and work explore the topics of religion/spirituality, empire, anti-US imperialism, decolonization, conflict resolution, and embodied resistance.

She is currently exploring how the microcosms we create of small communities can be our primary/most immediate/most intimate practice of embodying justice and unlearning/healing from the mechanisms of empire: capitalism, white-bodied supremacy, and other forms of being in the world that are detrimental to ourselves and our planet.

As Anishinaabe writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson puts it, “How do we live and work together?”

Ashley holds a B.A. in critical ethnic studies from Kalamazoo College, with minors in political science and music. Her work has developed through positions in immigration law, policy advocacy through the YWCA, focus group facilitation, greenhouse vegetable sales, after-school tutoring, and her most recent work as an editorial assistant and fact-checker.

Ashley Noelle will be in residence at Can Serrat during the month of April 2022.