Peter E. Murphy
Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a cab. He is the author of six books and chapbooks including Stubborn Child, a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. He has received fellowships and awards for writing and teaching from The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Millay Colony, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Yaddo and the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. Peter is the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University which includes the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and other programs for poets, writers and teachers in the U.S. and abroad. www.peteremurphy.com
Photo Courtesy of the Author
Books
More Challenges for the Delusional
Publication Date:
March 2018
More Challenges for the Delusional, edited by Ona Gritz and Daniel Simpson, is a craft book based on prompts and exercises for generating writing developed by Peter Murphy in his role as a writing teacher. This long-anticipated follow-up to "Challenges for the Delusional" brings us a wealth of Peter Murphy’s writing prompts, and an anthology of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. In this edition, you will encounter a diverse range of emerging and accomplished writers including Kim Addonizio, Tony Hoagland, Dorianne Laux, Mimi Schwartz, and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn. The prompts will ignite your creativity, daring you to take risks and produce work that is sometimes strange but always thought-provoking. This book will offer something new each time you return to it.
I Thought I Was Going To Be Okay
February 2016
Publication Date:
Praise
"Peter Murphy is a maker of combinatory perceptions and the source of a voice that can sing more than a single note at a time—nothing encoded here, nothing esoteric, but poems that set new standards for clarity, a dark hilarity, and sting, all delivered seamlessly. He is a poet of remarkably keen abilities, generous intellect, and humanity. And, yes, when the Murphy-knife is thrust, you’ll gasp, but, then, once it’s twisted, you’ll most likely get to laugh before you cry."
—Renee Ashley
"As a professor of gerontology, a chair in education and aging, and an expert in cognitive change with age, I know that science is a slow path to understanding. Poetry is much faster. Peter Murphy writes about the fragilities of health, love, material possessions, the expectation that there is fairness and justice, and that we will experience happiness. His poems will break your heart and make you laugh, often simultaneously, as you feel his despair and his marvelous sense of the absurdity of it all."
—Elizabeth Zelinski
