Credited with inventing the demi-sonnet, a seven-line form, Erin Murphy is the author or editor 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). 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. She has served as Poet Laureate of Blair County, Pennsylvania, since 2023.
