The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence

Nancy Murphy is a Los Angeles based writer and performer and 2020 winner of the Aurora Poetry contest. Previous publications include Gyroscope Review, SWWIM Every Day, The Baltimore Review, The South Carolina Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, glassworks, The Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review, Louisville Review and others. She was recently featured in "Poets on Craft" at the online arts magazine Cultural Daily.

A long time volunteer at WriteGirl, Nancy has mentored teens through writing programs. In 2016, she wrote and performed a solo show in various venues including the Hollywood Fringe Festival where she earned an Encore Award. Nancy grew up in upstate NY and holds a B.A. in American Studies from Union College, Schenectady, NY. www.nancymurphywriter.com

Praise for the chapbook The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence by Nancy Murphy

Burning into Womanhood
"I want to tell her/ it takes a woman / a lifetime to know / if she is real / or only appears so / in a mirror." Those are the words of the speaker in this debut collection from Nancy Murphy. At times melancholy, at times fierce, and always lyrical, these poems explore the various roles that women shift into and out of in their lives. From marriage to divorce, from having a mother to being a mother, to sending a daughter off to college, these poems explore the way women center the world, and what can happen when we lose that center and are forced to grapple with the realization that maybe "there is no mother now." This book is for women and poetry lovers at every stage of their lives. A deeply personal and enjoyable read, this collection is one to revisit over and over again.

-Tresha Faye Haefner, Author of Take This Longing. Founder of The Poetry Salon


Moving, accomplished, pulled cleanly through the lens of its title, The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence hums with the dense flesh of memory, its beating heart. This chapbook, Nancy Murphy's first, betrays the grace and mastery of a later full-length work; for all its distillation, it encompasses the sweep, the scope and self-examination of a bildungsroman femme-a dance of revelation and restraint, finely balancing the shade, the light of ache, regret, and joy. Even the ekphrastic feels inhabited. These poems feel cinematic, as if moments of life are "stretching in our hands / like the wonder of boardwalk taffy / that never breaks."

-Sarah Maclay, author of Nightfall Marginalia