Ashley Melzer is a producer, filmmaker and writer based in Durham, NC. She grew up in North Florida, the youngest daughter of a small town dentist and nurse. Growing up, Ashley was a wannabe beatnik who loved music, wrote bad poetry and annoyed her older brothers. Her brothers grew up to become dentists. Ashley either missed or threw away the family memo and has instead chased creative pursuits.
She received her Bachelor's in Cinematic Arts from the University of Southern California and then a Masters in Folklore from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her writing and photography have been featured in Indy Week, Paste Magazine, eMusic, and the Southern Foodways Alliance to name a few and is Multimedia and Special Projects Producer for Southern Cultures Journal. She's worked with Hopscotch, Moogfest, The Groove Productions, Thornapple Films, The Southern Oral History Program and more.
Ashley served as Director of Humanities for the Public Good, a $1.5-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation intended to recognize and catalyze publicly engaged scholarly activity among humanists and humanistic social scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is now the Director of the newly formed Arts and Humanities Grant Studio, an engagement and support initiative which reinforces the work of the university’s leading faculty, staff, and student humanists, assisting with the workload of and cultivating growth for grant-funded projects.
Ashley is Producer of You Gave Me a Song, a feature length documentary about the life and music of legendary old-time and bluegrass musician Alice Gerrard, which premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival (2019) and played on PBS Reel South (2020). Ashley is also director and producer of Zara, a one person show about an anxious, asthmatic Muslim kid’s search for meaning and the chance encounters that impacted him.
Ashley is a founding partner and stakeholder of Mettlesome, a creative collective in Durham that produces smart, independent projects with particular focus on improv and sketch. For Mettlesome, she performs with Golden Age, a monthly showcase of improv based on local artists in other disciplines. Mettlesome won a 2017 Indy Arts Award for contributions to the Triangle comedy community.
When not imagining the dental career that might have been, Ashley is usually hanging out with her husband Jack, their son Dashiell and rescue dog Iceman.
