Rich Murphy holds degrees from Boston University, including a graduate degree in creative writing. He studied with the late George Starbuck and Derek Walcott. For 21 years, he has taught writing and literature and directed undergraduate writing programs at Bradford and Emmanuel Colleges; he currently teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts. His credits include a book of poems The Apple in the Monkey Tree (Codhill Press); chapbooks Great Grandfather (Pudding House Publications), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), and Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Press); poems in hundreds of journals in Anglophone countries; and essays in such periodicals as The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and Culture, Fringe, and Big Toe Review. His essay on poetry’s evolving ecology will be in a special issue of The Journal of Ecocritism (University of British Columbia). His books and chapbooks have been nominated for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Griffin Award, Balcones Center Poetry Award, L.L. Winship / PEN New England Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, and William Carlos Williams Award.