Dan

An American poet of Irish and Slovenian descent, Dan Murphy teaches creative writing and literature at Boston University. He’s previously taught at Emmanuel College, where he advised the student literary journal, The Saintly Review, and at Suffolk University and Lasell University. From 2019-2020, he served as Writer-in-Residence at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he taught workshops in poetry and fiction, and invited distinguished writers to read and participate in colloquia.

A past Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and Betsy Leonard Scholar at Boston University, he earned his MFA in Creative Writing in 2015. Poet/critic Dan Chiasson served as his thesis advisor. 

During his undergraduate career, he was mentored by poets Cecilia Woloch, Jonathan Fink, Shawn Sturgeon, Jonathan Aaron, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, who selected him as a Grace Abernethy Scholar in Creative Writing at Emory University. 

His poems have appeared in several national and international journals including Sugar House Review, Slipstream, The Adirondack Review, Terrain.org, The Summerset Review, TAB Journal, Rust + Moth, The Café Review, and The Dodge. In 2016, his chapbook The Narrow House was shortlisted for the international Fool for Poetry competition. His unpublished, first full-length collection, Estate Sale, was named a finalist for the 2022 Barry Spacks Prize in Poetry by Gunpowder Press and the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award by Regal House Publishing in 2024.

Before earning an MFA and his career in teaching, Dan worked as a political strategist and consultant for several electoral campaigns, including for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, former congressman Mike Capuano, and Lowell City Councilor Vesna Nuon. He also managed Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s first campaign for Boston City Council, James Arena-DeRosa’s bid for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and the successful campaigns of his own (identical twin) brother, former mayor of Lowell, Massachusetts, Patrick Ó. Murphy.

In his teens, Dan was a Golden Gloves and Silver Mittens boxer, running Fort Hill with Micky Ward, and training under Lowell boxing legends Mickey O’Keefe, Art Ramalho, and David Ortiz. He worked summers for his cousins as a mason’s laborer. As an undergraduate, he paid for school working as a carpenter, a trade he learned from his father at a young age. He also worked as a mover, bartender, legislative aide, and as a Press Officer within the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. 

His work as a visual artist has been exhibited at the An Beal Bocht gallery in New York and he has recorded on five different albums of traditional Irish music, including with his sister, the fiddler Gráinne Murphy, playing accompaniment on the bodhrán. 

He served as an editor for Trasna, an online, international literary journal, from 2021-2024, guiding its evolution, aesthetic, and design, while widening its audience and contributing writers. He’s also worked as an editorial assistant at AGNI magazine. 

He lives and gardens in Massachusetts with his wife and their two daughters.