Bio
Patricia Murphy is a Senior Lecturer at Arizona State University where she teaches creative writing. In Spring 2009 she was recognized at the highest level of the university, receiving a Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Student Mentoring after being nominated by her Dean. She is the founding editor of the literary magazine Superstition Review. Murphy earned her B.A. in English and French from Miami University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. She served as a poetry editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review from 1995-1996. She has taught over 160 classes at ASU and has offered many workshops on pedagogy and teaching strategies to ASU faculty.
Also at ASU, Murphy serves as a Faculty Ambassador, she was a member of the Academic Senate where she sat on the Personnel Committee, she was the secretary of the Academic Assembly of the College of Applied Arts and Sciences. She is on the Provost’s Advisory Committee for Non-Tenure Track Faculty. She has overseen many student internships and independent studies, and she has been Reader and Director of Barrett Honors College projects in creative writing. She encourages her students to become members of the arts community by inviting them to attend cultural events, readings, and conferences. She coordinated a Student Reading Series in the spring of 2007 at Eye Lounge Gallery in Phoenix, where her students read their original poetry and creative nonfiction.
Murphy has read her work at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Antigone Bookstore in Tucson, Tempe Center for the Arts, the Swarthout Awards Ceremony in Tempe, the Shemer Art Center and Museum, Chandler Gilbert Community College, and Eye Lounge Gallery in Phoenix. She delivered the Keynote Address at the 2nd Annual Friends Benefit Dinner for the Casa Grande Public Library. As a Faculty Ambassador to Marcos DeNiza High School in Tempe she delivered the presentation titled: “So You Want to Be a Writer? How to Use Your Love of Language to Earn A Decent Living Wage.” She has presented at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Desert Nights Rising Starts, the College Composition and Communication Conference, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, and the Western States Composition Conference.
Murphy collaborated with artist Lisa Marie Sipe on “Fossil Springs Cutaway,” a display of sensory images in art and text, which was featured at Eye Lounge Gallery in Phoenix. Murphy has also worked with Alzheimer’s patients in a found poem project, she has taught poetry for the Chinese Hope School, she ran a community poetry workshop, and she taught restorative writing classes at a Yoga studio in Tempe.
Murphy has published her writing in many literary magazines including Calyx, The Massachusetts Review, Clackamas Literary Review, New Orleans Review, Rio Grande Review, Hawaii Review, The GSU Review, Wisconsin Review, The Evansville Review, Nebraska Review, Notre Dame Review, Seattle Review, The South Carolina Review, Cimarron Review, Kalliope, South Dakota Review, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Green Mountains Review, Indiana Review, and The Iowa Review. Her collaborative essay titled “Teaching in the Wake of National Tragedy,” appeared in the book Trauma and the Teaching of Writing published by the State University of New York Press.
Murphy’s manuscript Inevitable Flow was chosen as a finalist or semi-finalist by Alice James Books, Carnegie Mellon Press, and University of Wisconsin Press. Her manuscript Sun Damage was a finalist at Carnegie Mellon Press. Her poems have received awards from Bellevue Literary Review, Gulf Coast, The GSU Review, Glimmer Train Press, The Adirondack Review, The Madison Review, and the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize. She has also won awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Associated Writing Programs. In 2000 she was a fellow at the Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes CA. In 2011 she was awarded an Artist’s Grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center.
Murphy has traveled to 31 countries including Tanzania, Hungary, China, Thailand, Korea, Venezuela, and Argentina. A fitness enthusiast, she has raced in over 70 events such as marathons, duathlons, and triathlons. She lives in Phoenix Arizona near South Mountain Park with her partner John Hetrick and two Vizslas.
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