about author/designer/and
illustrator Ashley Rice
written by me (Penelope J. Miller!):

Ashley Rice grew up in Texas and currently lives in Texas. She has also lived in a lot of different places in between: Spain, New Jersey, San Diego, New York City, San Francisco and Boston, where she once lived inside an old piano factory which had been converted into an artists’ community. She received her M.F.A. in fiction writing from Emerson College in 2004 and was fiction editor of the Naussau Literary Review at Princeton University, for which she later illustrated a childrens’ book called Where Are the Tigers?

She has worked as a hamburger cook, a movie ticket seller, a restaurant hostess, a yogurt cashier and a waitress, among other things. She has also done volunteer craft work with Girls Inc. and designed a pink chair with her poem “Your Star” on it for Dallas Casa. Ashley loves poetry, books, music and bracelets. To read more about her in a Dallas Morning News article, click here. In the meantime, hope you enjoy everything you are doing and are up to these days.

By the way, have a great day!
Your friend,
Penelope J. Miller

Contact Ashley by sending an email to: ashleylynn73@aol.com

Check out Ashley's profile in the Grapevine Star



Dallas Writer Shares Positive Story

By Katharine Goodloe,The Dallas Morning News
(originally published in 2004)

If Ashley Rice were to tell you her story, she probably wouldn't do it herself.

Instead, you might see here Penelope J. Miller, a brown-haired, sticklike narrator with a pentagon-shaped face whom Ms. Rice created to lead readers through the books she writes to encourage young girls.

Ms. Rice, has published a collection of books with Blue Mountain Arts, including the lime-green-covered Friends Rule and the hot pink Girls Rule, which sold more than 150,000 copies.

But as Penelope would point out, the real story begins further back.

The first thing Penelope would show us is a scene from Ms. Rice's high school days at the all-girls Hockaday School in Dallas, where she decorated her friends' lockers in bright posters for track meets, swim competitions and test days. The decor basically amounted to "big greeting cards," she says.

And maybe Penelope would let you in on a secret: Ms. Rice was pretty good at this, and in a few years she would have two lines of her own greeting cards. < o:p>

Or maybe she'd take us forward a few more years, to an office building in La Jolla, Calif.

As a 21-year-old junior at Princeton University, Ms. Rice came to California to intern at Blue Mountain Arts, where she was to find quotes for future greeting cards. But as she collected them, Ms. Rice decided two things: Most of the quotes didn't convey the feelings she wanted, and she preferred just writing the cards herself.

And so she did.

Ms. Rice began giving her boss copies of her own creations alongside the researched quotes, all decorated with colored-pencil sketches of yellow flowers, pink hearts and playful cats.

"I just made them all as if they were cards," she says.

The company decided to test Ms. Rice's designs – and they did well.

Perhaps Penelope would hint at another secret here: The cards tested so well that they would become Ms. Rice's first greeting card line, titled "Backyard Poetry" because of its folk-art feel and emphasis on Ms. Rice's own writings.

Or maybe she would take us forward another year, and to another part of California.

In 1996, after graduation, Ms. Rice moved to San Francisco to work for Blue Mountain Arts, updating the cards she created as an intern.

Among her sketches for the "Backyard Poetry" line was that small sticklike girl with bright clothing, who likely first appeared in a card about friendship. Back then, she didn't even have a name. Still, Penelope "was there almost from the beginning," Ms. Rice says.

Encouragement

Ashley Rice's artistic endeavors began casually at the Hockaday School, when she'd decorate her friends' lockers. The next part of this story takes us to Boston three years later, where Penelope's own development would truly begin. Ms. Rice began working toward a master's degree in fiction writing at Emerson College while keeping her full-time job as a greeting card designer. But=2 0along with her cards on friendship and creativity, she slipped in cards on a new theme: encouraging young girls. It was just as the "girl power" movement was picking up across the country.

The idea sprang from her time at the all-girls high school, which Ms. Rice says reminded girls they could be anything they wanted.

But it startled her to meet others who didn't know that – and Ms. Rice began writing the cards to encourage them.

"I feel like I have something to say with the girls' cards," she says. "I feel it's important for girls to know there's a lot of opportunity out there."

And having hot pink as her favorite color? "It helps," she says.

While in Boston, Ms. Rice began collecting her cards to be published as books. Her first, Girls Rule, would become a top seller. But to make it work, Ms. Rice needed a narrator to weave the cards together. So she turned back to that sticklike young girl and gave her a name.

"She was the natural narrator for the book," Ms. Rice says. "Some people say she has characteristics of my family."

And this is where Penelope just might blush.

Back to Dallas

But to finish her story, Penelope would have to take us one more place: a two-story house in Dallas, where Ms. Rice now works from a light-yellow studio covered in stencils of butterflies and roses. Although steadily creating cards and books, Ms. Rice also has a few side projects under way. She's writing short stories for several literary reviews and has kept a novel in the closet since graduate school.

She's also writing a book about her grandparents, who owned an Arkansas hog farm.

"That one is important to me," she says.

She's also working on a second line of greeting cards, called the Ashley Rice Collection. Her bosses at Blue Mountain Arts say Ms. Rice's cards are popular for their optimism and creativity, and her books became popular for the same reasons. "Everything is very uplifting," says Doug Clarke, who handles acquisitions and licensing for the company. "It puts a positive attitude on everyone." Along the wall of her studio, a small bookshelf holds many of those uplifting stories, including the 10 books Ms. Rice has written. Her stories have been published in many countries, but only four of the books are out in English, she says. The rest are on the way. Among them is another book which may star Penelope's older sister. But Ms. Rice isn't sure how often the Miller family will be making guest appearances.

"I keep getting letters from little girls wanting to know more about Penelope," Ms. Rice says. "I think she's the one they relate with."