President
April 23, 2018
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, WA, 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. She was formerly a staff editor at The Atlantic and fiction editor at Memorious, an online literary magazine.
“Jessica brings a robust and diverse literary career to the University of Portland. I am struck by her versatility and creativity,” said Rev. Mark L. Poorman, C.S.C., University president. “She is grounded in her faith and her writing clearly reflects her understanding of Catholic social teachings, but also a thoughtful and critical approach as an editor.”
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.
“I am immensely grateful for this opportunity,” said Murphy Moo. “I feel I already know the University of Portland through the magic Brian Doyle brought to Portland magazine. I am humbled to be carrying his torch, and I feel the responsibility of this task.”
In addition to her fiction and nonfiction 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. “I became a recipient of Brian’s kind and sound editorial advice, in addition to the affirmation that comes from being acknowledged by a writer you admire.”
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.”
A writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Murphy Moo’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Image, and Memorious (published before she became fiction editor there), 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.
She is also a librettist and wrote the libretto for An American Dream, an opera composed by Jack Perla, which had its world premiere at Seattle Opera in 2015. The opera was remounted there in 2017 and will be presented at the Chicago Lyric Opera in 2019. She was a 2016 fellow at Tapestry Opera’s Librettist Composer Laboratory Workshop and is currently working on a new libretto for an opera for young audiences.
She earned her B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross and earned an M.F.A. in fiction at Emerson College. She has held teaching positions at Emerson College, Harvard University, Boston University, Seattle Pacific University, University of Washington, and Seattle Opera.
Murphy Moo credits the Catholic Church and its social justice teachings, as well as her Jesuit education, with the awakening of her activism and continuing education in ally work. After college, she was a Jesuit Volunteer at a Jesuit high school on the island of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia. She has been a member of Seattle Opera’s Equity Task Force and of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a nonpartisan group that works to teach communities about safe gun storage and suicide prevention and to work with legislators for sensible gun laws.
When she isn’t writing, she and her husband can be found chasing after their three children and finding the humor in things.
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