Jessica Murphy Moo

Jessica Murphy Moo has been appointed editor of Portland magazine, the award-winning publication of the University of Portland. A writer, editor, and teacher, Murphy Moo comes to UP from Seattle, where she has been senior communications manager for the Seattle Opera, as well as an adjunct instructor teaching nonfiction writing for the University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education program. She was formerly a staff editor at The Atlantic and fiction editor at Memorious, an online literary magazine.

Murphy Moo, who will begin her role at the University in July, follows the late Brian Doyle as the editor of the magazine, a literary publication that reflects both Catholic tradition and a unique Pacific Northwest aesthetic. In addition to her fiction and nonfiction work in various literary journals and magazines, Murphy Moo also profiled a group of Benedictine nuns who live on Washington’s Shaw Island for Portland magazine in 2008.

Murphy Moo says her top priority when she arrives will be to get to know the people who comprise the UP community and their stories. “In my experience, most people don’t know that their life and their work tell a story. The value of writers resides in our ability to connect the dots between a person’s every day and a person’s heart. In that space, story and mystery abound.”

Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Image, and Memorious, and Signs of Life, an anthology for Seattle-based writers. Her nonfiction has appeared in Portland magazine, Poets & Writers Magazine, ParentMap, The Tablet, Boston College Magazine, and The Atlantic Online, among other publications. In 2006, she earned a nine-month postgraduate writing fellowship from Image magazine, an award given annually to a writer of Christian commitment who is working on a first book.

When she isn’t writing, she and her husband can be found chasing after their three children and finding the humor in things.

For more information contact marketing and communications at x7202 or mktg@up.edu.