Muriel Craft Bailey was born in Avoca, PA to Arnold W. Craft Sr and Jennie Laird Craft. She was well educated, graduating from Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, PA and Elmira College in Elmira, NY. She married Judson E. Bailey in 1940, and raised their daughter Jennifer as a single mother after he died in service in the Navy during WWII. Muriel Bailey was a writer and published several poems shortly before her death in 1985. Her daughter, Jennifer MacPherson, was one of the founding poets of the Comstock Writers Group. In 1997, the first year of The Comstock Review, the Muriel Craft Bailey Poem Award was established with Michael Burkard as the judge.
Publishing outstanding poetry since 1986