Joan Murray

Joan Murray (born August 6, 1945) is an American poet, writer, playwright and editor. She is best known for her narrative poems, particularly her book-length novel-in-verse, Queen of the Mist; her collection Looking for the Parade which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition, and her New and Selected Poems volume, Swimming for the Ark, which was chosen as the inaugural volume in White Pine Press's Distinguished Poets Series. Early life and education Joan Murray was born in the South Bronx and attended Hunter College, first as a studio art major, and later as an English major, winning Hunter College's Bernard Cohen fiction prize. She married at 19 and had two children (one of whom died in infancy). She earned an M.A. from New York University and, in 1970, began teaching at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Career Murray’s first collection, The Same Water, won the Wesleyan New Poets Series Competition and was a finalist for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award. Her second book, Queen of the Mist, a novel-in-verse about the first person to go over Niagara in a barrel, was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates as runner up for a Poetry Society of America award; she was also commissioned by Broadway’s Jujamcyn Theaters to adapt it for the stage. Her third book, Looking for the Parade, was chosen by Robert Bly as winner of the National Poetry Series Open Competition. Her fourth book, Dancing on the Edge, was published in connection with her bestselling 9/11 anthology, Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, and she is also the editor of its anti-war sequel, Poems to Live by in Troubling Times. She was poetry co-editor of The Pushcart Prize 25th Anniversary Edition, and is the editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry: the Best Poems from Thirty Years of The Pushcart Prize. Her collection, Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems, 1990-2015, was the inaugural volume in the White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series. Murray's poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many journals including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The Hudson Review, the Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker; the Village Voice; and in anthologies, including The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize. She has read her work on NPR's Morning Edition, Radiolab, The Bob Edwards Show and The Chautauqua Lectures.