Austin Dean Ashford

Austin Dean Ashford is a storyteller, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area of California. During his time at James Logan High School, Mr. Ashford fine-tuned his gift for speech, poetry, acting and debate under the direction of Dr. Tommie Lindsey, Jr., a MacArthur Genius award recipient.  Austin’s gift for poetry was featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, “Brave New Voices” and was the World Individual Youth Slam Champion.

Austin’s performance background began early on as an oral interpretation student in competitive forensics and spoken word poetry. Austin earned a full scholarship to compete for Wiley College in Speech and Debate, a team re-started in 2008 by Denzel Washington following the success of The Great Debaters, a movie he starred in and directed. During his undergraduate career Austin won 21 national titles, the majority of which were in oral interpretation and acting events.

After graduating from Wiley College in 2016, Austin enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, which time he specialized in acting and playwriting. As his studies progressed, he began focusing on solo show productions, specifically those integrating aspects of hip hop theatre and spoken word. Austin’s first solo show was “(I)sland T(rap),” a solo show he wrote which won Best One Man Show Off Broadway. His most recent project, “Black Book” is also a solo show which was fortunate to win several more awards from the Kennedy Center’s (ACTF).