Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 2/11/26, we featured Inner Moonlight favorite Samantha Strong Murphey!

Samantha Strong Murphey (she/her) has an MFA in Poetry from NYU and has been supported by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center. She’s taught creative writing at UT-Dallas, been a submission reader for Dallas-based literary magazine Sine Qua Non, and interned for her hometown global powerhouse publisher Deep Vellum Books. (Can you tell she loves Dallas?) Her work has been published by Rattle and the Crab Creek Review and is forthcoming the North American Review. She was a finalist for Ninth Letter’s Regeneration Prize and Gulf Coast’s Barthelme Prize. Before poetry, Sam worked as a journalist and has a rich and lengthy unwritten resume as a caregiver to her three human children, a dashing rescue cat, and a very earnest rescue dog. Sam grew up split between Cincinnati, Ohio and Fayetteville, Arkansas, but has, for the last decade, resided in Oak Cliff, the coolest neighborhood in … you guessed it … Dallas. She believes in sharp cheese, gun reform, and karaoke for all.

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com