De’Ashia Wallace AJ P.R.
Poet. Author. Spoken-word artist. Teaching artist. Founder of My Pen Still Has Ink LLC.
Her work begins with real life—the beautiful parts, the painful parts, and the parts people are often afraid to say out loud.
Poetry is not just about writing a good poem. It is about giving words to what hurts.
A life turned into language.
De’Ashia Wallace, known artistically as AJ P.R., is a poet, author, spoken-word artist, and teaching artist who has been writing poetry since the age of fourteen.
Her work is rooted in real life—the beautiful parts, the painful parts, and the parts most people are afraid to say out loud. Through poetry and performance, she explores grief, family, love, identity, survival, loss, healing, and the complicated relationships that shape who people become.
As the founder of My Pen Still Has Ink LLC, De’Ashia has built her creative work around the belief that difficult experiences do not have to silence a person. They can become language. They can become art. They can become connection.
Her writing does not attempt to make painful experiences neat or comfortable. Instead, she allows grief, anger, tenderness, memory, humor, regret, and resilience to exist beside one another—the same way they often do in real life.
That same honesty carries into her spoken-word performances, teaching work, workshops, and conversations with audiences. Whether she is writing for the page or performing for a room, De’Ashia's goal is not simply to be heard. It is to create the kind of recognition that makes someone else feel understood.
Some things need somewhere to go.
De’Ashia's work often begins in the places where ordinary conversation becomes difficult—grief, complicated family histories, survival, relationships, trauma, love, and memory.
Poetry gives those experiences somewhere to live without requiring them to become simple.
Her work preserves people and moments that changed her while creating room for readers and listeners to recognize pieces of their own lives.
Even after everything life takes from you, your pen can still have ink.
More than one way to tell a story.
De’Ashia's creative practice moves between written work, performance, teaching, and direct engagement with audiences.
Poetry & Writing
Personal, emotionally direct writing centered on family, grief, relationships, survival, identity, loss, and healing.
Spoken Word
Performance work that brings the rhythm, vulnerability, humor, tension, and emotional weight of the writing into the room.
Teaching & Workshops
Creative and educational experiences designed to help participants find their voice, tell difficult stories, and turn experience into meaningful expression.
The Hug I Wish I Gave You
De’Ashia's poetry collection turns lived experience into a deeply personal exploration of grief, family, love, trauma, survival, memory, and healing.
The book reflects much of what defines her larger body of work: a willingness to enter difficult emotional spaces while searching for connection inside them.
Writing can begin the conversation. Performance can make people feel it.
De’Ashia is available for spoken-word performances, workshops, speaking engagements, educational programs, interviews, panels, and creative collaborations.