Joan Murray is author of six books, including Queen of the Mist, Looking For The Parade – which won the 1998 National Poetry Series Competition, and The Same Water – which won the Wesleyan New Poets Series Competition and was a finalist for the Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Hudson Review, The Paris Review, Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and in many other journals and major anthologies. Her publishers include Beacon Press, W.W. Norton, Wesleyan University Press, Writers & Books, Sunbury Press and Doubleday.
Ms. Murray has received fellowships for her writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and three Writer in Residence grants from the New York State Council on the Arts. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, of the Bernard Cohen Fiction Prize, and of Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Award for a single poem. She was Runner-up for PSA’s di Castagnola Award for a Manuscript in Progress and the Gertrude Claytor Award for a poem on the American character. She has taught at Lehman College of the City University of New York, for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the New York State Literary Center. She represents the artists of New York in advocacy for the New York State Arts and Cultural Coalition.
In 1995 Ms. Murray invited the award-winning filmmaker Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe to produce a video – QUEEN OF THE MIST – based on Murray’s poems and story (of Annie Edson Taylor – the impoverished 63 year-old teacher who, in 1901, was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel). The book was conceived and written by Murray during two years in Niagara Falls as New York State Council on the Arts Writer in Residence and was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates as Runner-up for the Poetry Society of America’s di Castagnola Award. Ms. Murray co-produced the video, and coordinated casting, costuming and locations for the filming.
The video QUEEN OF THE MIST has been shown in festivals in Europe, North America and New Zealand. The video was awarded First Prize in the New Arts Program Video Festival (1997) and Director’s Citation in the Black Maria Film and Video Festival (1997).
last updated: 1999