Joan Murray

Joan Murray is a poet, prose writer, and editor. She is the author of five books of poetry: Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems 1990–2015 (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series, 2015); Dancing on the Edge (Beacon Press, 2002); Looking for the Parade (W. W. Norton, 2000); Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara (Beacon Press, 2000); and The Same Water (Wesleyan University Press, 1990). 

Murray has also edited and coedited four anthologies: The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Press, 2006); Poems to Live By in Troubling Times (Beacon Press, 2006); Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times (Beacon Press, 2001); and The Pushcart Prize XXV: Best of the Small Presses, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2001 (Pushcart Press, 2001), coedited with Billy Collins and Bill Henderson, the founder of Pushcart Press. 

Murray is a National Poetry Series winner and a Wesleyan New Poets Series winner. She has also twice been awarded the Pushcart Prize for Poetry and received the Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also been a Pushcart Prize finalist in both fiction and nonfiction.

Murray, a former poet in residence at the New York State Writers Institute, has given readings and workshops at hundreds of conferences, universities and cultural centers, including the Chautauqua Institution, the International Poetry Forum, the Lark Theatre in Manhattan, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).