Ruby Hansen Murray

Ruby Hansen Murray is a citizen of the Osage and Cherokee Nations with Afro-Caribbean roots who lives in the lower Columbia River estuary and returns to her reservations in Northeastern Oklahoma often. She’s the regular culture columnist for the Osage News. Her essays have won The Iowa Review (2012) and Montana (2017 and 2024) Nonfiction Prizes. She’s a MacDowell, Tin House Debut40+, Hedgebrook, and Indigenous Nations Poets fellow. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, The Hopkins Review, Ecotone, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Prose is included in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press), Allotment Stories (Univ of Minnesota Press), and Shapes of Native Nonfiction (Univ of Washington Press). She’s winner of Indigenous Journalist and OK Press Association prizes. Her work focusses on Puget Island and the Lower River estuary, as well as Osage and Cherokee lands, considering sovereignty and how we live in community.