Erin Murphy wins national book prize

Erin C. Murphy

Erin C. Murphy

Credit: Penn State

Erin Murphy, professor of English, has won the 2016 Brick Road Poetry Press Prize. The award includes $1,000 and publication of her new book of poems, Assisted Living.

Assisted Living is comprised of seventy-two demi-sonnets, a seven-line poetic form that Murphy devised. The poems encompass the life span experience, ranging from childhood to aging and care-giving. A section is devoted to poems based on Murphy’s late mother-in-law, Ann Palmer De Prospo, an accomplished pianist who was the leader of the Major Bowes All-Girl Band in the 1930s. De Prospo died in 2013 at the age of 99.

Murphy is the author or editor of eight previous books, most recently Creating Nonfiction: Twenty Essays and Interviews with the Writers (SUNY Press, 2016) and Ancilla (Lamar University Press, 2014).