I was raised in Champaign, Illinois and received my B.A. in History at the University of Illinois. I met her husband, Daniel, on a study year abroad in Austria. Though my ambition from my teenage years was to write novels, my primary vocation for many years was mothering a growing family of six children. I didn’t start writing in earnest until the 1990s.
Writing & Print Publishing:
After publishing a few short pieces on family spirituality in the U.S. and U.K. Catholic press, my first short story won the 1998 Kay Snow award sponsored by Willamette Writers. The story (“Yardsticks”) was published in issue no. 37 (Winter, 2002-03) of Image.
An early draft of my debut novel, The Mystery of Things, was selected as a finalist in the 2000 Pacific Northwest Writers Association genre fiction contest. Things was published in December 2004 by Idylls Press, the artisan small press I founded that year with the mission of publishing new and classic fiction in the Catholic tradition. In writing The Mystery of Things, I drew on a life-long love of Shakespeare, mythopoeic literature, and mystery/suspense tnovels, particularly the classic British mysteries of Dorothy Sayers and P.D. James.
in the realm of non-fiction, I was a contributing editor for Godspy from 2004 to 2008, where I published reviews and op-ed pieces on contemporary faith and culture. I’ve also contributed articles to Catholic Exchange, Second Spring, and This Rock.
Web Publishing:
An avid moviegoer, reader, Shakespeare fan, and WordPress geek, I’ve been publishing websites since the late 1990s. I curate and write reviews for Bardolatry, a website devoted to Shakespeare-on-film, Catholic Fiction, and an e-mail newsletter called Quotes for Catholic Writers. My most personal reviews and articles appear at Simply the Good Stuff, a blog I developed for my family, “Clan Murphy.”
Clan Murphy lives and works in beautiful Ashland, Oregon, in the Mythical State of Jefferson.
