Erin Murphy is an American poet and educator credited with inventing the demi-sonnet, a seven-line poetic form. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including Human Resources (Salmon Poetry, 2025), Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024), winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award for Poetry, Taxonomies: Demi-Sonnets (2022), and Assisted Living: Demi-Sonnets (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018), winner of the Brick Road Poetry Press Prize. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Paterson Prize for Literary Excellence, and the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a professor at Penn State Altoona, serving since 2022 as Poet Laureate of Blair County, Pennsylvania.