Open Skies, Desert Voices Poetry Reading

Open Skies, Desert Voices Poetry Reading

Lois Roma-Deely | Rosemarie Dombrowski | Patricia Murphy

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is celebrating Women’s History Month with Lois Roma-Deeley, Rosemarie Dombrowski, and Patricia Murphy, our Founding Editor. At the event, these three amazing poets will read original works honoring women and the wonder of words.

This virtual event is on Thursday, March 31 at 7 pm. RSVP here with pay-what-you-wish tickets.

Learn more about the featured poets below!

Lois Roma-Deeley’s poetry collection is Like Water in the Palm of My Hand (forthcoming 2022). Her previous books include The Short List of Certainties, High Notes, northSight, and Rules of Hunger. Her poems are published nationally and internationally. Roma-Deeley is associate poetry editor of Presence.  She was named U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation in 2012. Roma-Deeley is the current Scottsdale Poet Laureate.  

Rosemarie Dombrowski is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix and the founding editor of rinky dink press. She’s the recipient of an Arts Hero Award, a Great 48 award, and a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. In 2020, she founded Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates therapeutic poetry workshops for vulnerable populations. She teaches courses at ASU Downtown and is a lecturer for Arizona Humanities. 

Patricia Murphy teaches at Arizona State University, where she founded Superstition Review. Her book Bully Love won the 2019 Press 53 Poetry Award, and her book Hemming Flames won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, and Black Warrior Review, and she has received awards from Gulf Coast and Bellevue Literary Review, among others.

#ArtLitPhx: The Bridge Series feat. Patricia Colleen Murphy

Patricia Colleen MurphyParadise Valley Community College is hosting a reading series this fall and featuring speakers in September, October, and November. The series is called “The Bridges Series” and focuses on making connections and forging paths.

We’re so proud to announce that Superstition Review’s founding editor, Patricia Colleen Murphy, is the first speaker in the series. She will be presenting in the Puma Press Room on Thursday, September 14 from 10:30am until 12:00pm. Murphy’s book, Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press, 2016) won the May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn. Hemming Flames also won the Milt Kessler Hemming FlamesPoetry Award in 2017. New Orleans Review also published a chapter from her memoir in progress as a chapbook. Murphy has been published in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, North American Review, and more. Visit her website here.

The series also features Hedy Habra on Thursday, October 19 from 10:30am to 12:00pm and Beth Cato on Thursday, November 16 from 10:30am to 12:00pm. Both of these events will take place in the Puma Press Room.

Habra has authored two poetry collections, Under Brush Strokes and Tea in Heliopolis. Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the USA Best Book Award and the International Poetry Book Award. Tea in Heliopolis was the winner of the USA Best Book Award and finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Habra also authored a story collection, Flying Carpets, which won the Arab American National Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Habra is a six-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Visit her website here.

Cato is the author of The Clockwork Dagger, which was a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel, and The Clockwork Crown, which was an RT Reviewers’ Choice Finalist. She also authored a novella, “Wings of Sorrow and Bone,” which was a 2016 Nebula nominee. Visit her website here.

Authors Talk: Patricia Colleen Murphy

Patricia Colleen Murphy

Today we are pleased to feature author and founding editor of Superstition Review, Patricia Colleen Murphy as our Authors Talk series contributor. In an interview with Cass Murphy (previous interview editor and podcast blogger for Superstition Review), Patricia discusses her recent publication of her collection of poems in Hemming Flames.

She discusses the value of informing the audience of “both process and person” during poetry readings to help put the “poems in perspective.”

Although one review described her poems as “mean,” she expresses that her goal while writing this collection was “to be honest, to be true, and to be kind” even in the face of evidence that would prompt otherwise. We learn about the personal choices she made to create this brutally honest collection of poems in Hemming Flames. 


#ArtLitPhx: MFA Reading Series – Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy

MFA Reading Series - ASUPoets Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy will read from their recent work at Hayden Library on the Tempe Campus as part of the MFA Alumni Reading Series, presented by ASU’s Creative Writing Program. The event takes place on Thursday, September 22nd. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the reading begins at 7:00 p.m. A book signing and reception with light refreshments will follow the reading.

Sarah Vap received her MFA from Arizona State University. Vap is the author of six collections of poetry. Her most recent book, Viability, was selected by Mary Jo Bang for the National Poetry Series, and was released by Penguin in 2016.

Dexter L. Booth earned an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. His collection Scratching the Ghost was selected by Major Jackson for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Patricia Colleen Murphy, a graduate of ASU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her collection, Hemming Flames, was selected by Stephen Dunn for the May Swenson Poetry Award.

The event is free of charge and is open to the public. For more information please visit the ASU page and/or the Facebook event.

Hemming Flames Now Available

Patricia Colleen MurphyWe at Superstition Review are very pleased to announce that our founding editor, Patricia Colleen Murphy, recently had her first collection of poetry, Hemming Flames, published by Utah State University Press. Hemming Flames was chosen by Stephen Dunn as the winner of the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award.

 

Hemming FlamesThroughout this haunting first collection, Patricia Colleen Murphy shows how familial mental illness, addiction, and grief can render even the most courageous person helpless. With depth of feeling, clarity of voice, and artful conflation of surrealist image and experience, she delivers vivid descriptions of soul-shaking events with objective narration, creating psychological portraits contained in sharp, bright language and image. With Plathian relentlessness, Hemming Flames explores the deepest reaches of family dysfunction through highly imaginative language and lines that carry even more emotional weight because they surprise and delight. In landscapes as varied as an Ohio back road, a Russian mental institution, a Korean national landmark, and the summit of Kilimanjaro, each poem sews a new stitch on the dark tapestry of a disturbed suburban family’s world.

 

Patricia has two upcoming readings:

Thursday September 1st at 7 pm she will be reading with Sarah Vap at Changing Hands Tempe.

Thursday September 22nd at 7 pm she will be reading with Sarah Vap and Dexter Booth at ASU’s Hayden Library.

 

On August 20th, Four Chambers Press held a book release for Hemming Flames. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

 

The book is available from Amazon. For more information about the book, please visit its website.