Jeanne Murray Walker



Jeanne Murray Walker (born May 27, 1944) is an American poet and playwright.

Life
Murray was born in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, the daughter of John Gerald and Erna Murray.

In 1965, she won the Atlantic Monthly Award for both fiction and Poetry and was named the Atlantic Monthly Scholar at Bread Loaf School of English. She graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois with a B.A. in English in 1966. In 1969 she received an M.A. from Loyola University, and in 1974, she was granted a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Walker’s poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Image, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Poetry and many other journals. Her plays have been staged across the United States and in London. In 2005 she hosted a documentary about poetry in Pennsylvania, which was broadcast and rebroadcast on television and the web. A selection from her “Aunt Joe Poems” was featured on buses and trains with the Poetry in Motion project. A Professor of English at The University of Delaware, Jeanne also teaches in the Seattle Pacific Low Residency MFA Program.

Walker, the mother of two children and three grandchildren, is married to E. Daniel Larkin III, and lives in Merion Station, Pennsylvania.

Recognition
Among her awards are an NEA Fellowship, an Atlantic Monthly Fellowship, and a Pew Fellowship in The Arts.

Awards

 * Glenna Luschei Poetry Prize
 * Pew Fellowship in Poetry
 * National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
 * Eight Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships
 * Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry, Prairie Schooner
 * Washington National Theatre Competition New Play Award
 * The Virginia Duvall Mann New Play Award
 * Fellow, University of Delaware Center For Advanced Study
 * Associated Writing Programs Award for Poetry
 * Atlantic Monthly Fellowship for Poetry and Fiction, Bread Loaf School of English

Poetry

 * Nailing Up The Home Sweet Home. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Press, 1980.
 * Fugitive Angels. Port Townsend, WA: Dragon Gate Press, 1985.
 * Coming Into History. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Press, 1990.
 * Stranger Than Fiction. Princeton, NJ: ORL, 1992.
 * Gaining Time. Providence, RI: Copper Beech Press, 1998.
 * A Deed to the Light. Urbana, IL, and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
 * New Tracks, Night Falling. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009.

Drama

 * “The Queen, the Earl, and the Waiting Woman,” CITA Anthology, 2009.
 * “Inventing Montana”. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing Co., 2002.
 * “Tales From The Daily Tabloid”. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing Co., 2002.

Edited

 * Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, 1300–2000 (edited by Darryl Tippens, Stephen Weathers, and Jeanne Murray Walker). Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2005.