Human Resources

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen previous books of poetry and prose, most recently Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, Human Resources, and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry. Her edited anthologies of poetry, creative nonfiction, medical humanities, and docupoetics are published by Wesleyan University Press, the University of Nebraska Press, and SUNY Press. She received her M.F.A. in Poetry from UMass Amherst where she wrote her thesis under the direction of James Tate. Her awards include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, two Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards, the National Writers Union Poetry Prize judged by Donald Hall, the Foley Poetry Award, and the Patterson Prize for Literary Excellence. She serves as poetry editor of The Summerset Review. Murphy is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and the 2026-27 Penn State Laureate.