Ashley Oliphant

Dr. Ashley Oliphant is a retired Full Professor of English with teaching specialties in 20th-century American literature, the works of Ernest Hemingway, literary modernism, and rhetoric and composition. She travels all over the United States offering interactive shark tooth and seashell workshops for children and adults and presentations about her other books. She is a longtime member of the Hemingway Society and a contributor to its conferences and The Hemingway Review.

Oliphant is the author of six books. Her doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2007, was titled "Hemingway's Mixed Drinks: An Examination of the Varied Representation of Alcohol Across the Author's Canon." "Shark Tooth Hunting on the Carolina Coast," published by Pineapple Press in 2015, is the only color guide to fossil shark teeth found in the Carolinas. It has sold more than 20,000 copies. "Hemingway and Bimini: The Birth of Sport Fishing at 'The End of the World'" was published by Pineapple Press in 2017. It follows Hemingway's 1930's fishing adventures in Bimini, the westernmost Bahamian island, from 1935-1937 and his significant contribution to the founding of the International Game Fish Association. Her research for the book was completed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston on an Ernest Hemingway Research Grant. Her fourth book, a novel titled "In Search of Jimmy Buffett: A Key West Revival," was released in April 2018 by Warren Publishing. It tells the story of Livie Green, an English professor at a rural North Carolina university who has a bit of a meltdown and moves to Key West in the middle of a semester to become a waitress in a bar. Having convinced herself that she has written the perfect Jimmy Buffett song, she spends her tropical nights waiting in his old haunts for one of his legendary surprise visits and the chance to meet her hero. In 2021 Oliphant co-authored a book with Beth Yarbrough, her mother, titled "Jean Laffite Revealed: Unraveling One of America's Longest Running Mysteries." Published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, the book offers a new theory about the fate of New Orleans pirate Jean Laffite. In 2022, Warren Publishing released "Higher Education: Chronicles of a Dumpster Fire," the comedic prequel to "In Search of Jimmy Buffett." In it, Oliphant explores all of the things going wrong at America's colleges and universities these days.

Oliphant is an animal welfare advocate in her local community. As the founder of the Humane Voters of Lincoln County, she spearheaded the successful movement to end the use of the gas chamber at her county shelter. She is the chairperson of Lincoln County’s Animal Services Advisory Board and has worked for years to help the shelter achieve and then maintain its No Kill designation.

In her spare time, Oliphant likes to hunt for shark teeth and seashells, garden, travel with her family (including her son Miller and her husband Chris) and float in her swimming pool. She has two cats, Irish Kevin and Schooner Wharf. Her life-long dreams are to own a signed first edition of Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and to meet Jimmy Buffett.