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Press Kit
Photos
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Photo: Maree Wilkinson Photography

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Photo: David Murray

General

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Lee Murray is an author, editor, essayist, poet, and screenwriter from Aotearoa. A USA Today Bestselling author, Shirley Jackson- and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner, she is an NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow, and NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize winner. She is the first writer of Chinese heritage to win New Zealand’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. leemurray.info

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Lee Murray is a author, editor, poet, and screenwriter from Aotearoa. A USA Today Bestselling author, her titles include the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), fiction collection Grotesque: Monster Stories, and several books for children. Her many anthologies include Hellhole, Black Cranes (with Geneve Flynn), and Unquiet Spirits (with Angela Yuriko Smith), and her short fiction appears in Weird Tales, Space & Time, and Grimdark Magazine. A multiple Bram Stoker Award®-, Australian Shadows-, and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winner, Lee is New Zealand’s only Shirley Jackson Award winner, a NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow, and the 2023 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize winner. She is the first writer of Chinese heritage to win New Zealand’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. Read more at leemurray.info

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Lee Murray is an author, editor, poet, essayist, and screenwriter from Aotearoa. A USA Today Bestselling author with 40 titles to her credit, Lee is the winner of multiple Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows, and Bram Stoker awards, and is her country’s only recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award for psychological horror. Her titles include military thriller series, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir trilogy The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and short fiction collection Grotesque: Monster Stories. She is the editor of twenty-three anthologies, among them Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women with Geneve Flynn (RDSP), Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror with Angela Yuriko Smith, and women in horror poetry collection Under Her Eye with Lindy Ryan (BSB). Other works include non-fiction Mark My Words: Read the Submission Guidelines and Other Self-editing Tips (with Angela Yuriko Smith), and several books for children. Lee’s short stories and poems have appeared in prestigious venues such as Weird Tales, Space &Time, and Grimdark Magazine. She is a Rhysling- and Pushcart-nominated poet, and an Elgin Award runner up. Her poem “Cheongsam” won her the 2021 Australian Shadows Award,  and her prose poetry manuscript Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud won the 2023 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize and is forthcoming from The Cuba Press. A manuscript assessor, international literary judge, conference panellist and guest of honour, Lee is a former HWA Mentor of the Year, NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow. She is the first writer of Chinese heritage to win New Zealand’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/

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Poetry

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Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning writer and poet, and a five-time Bram Stoker Awards® winner, including for poetry for Tortured Willows (with Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Geneve Flynn). A NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, Lee is a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow and  winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize for her forthcoming prose-poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud. She is an Elgin Award runner up, and a Rhysling-, Dwarf Star-, and Pushcart-nominated poet. Her poem “cheongsam’ won the Australian Shadows Award for poetry for 2021. Her poetry anthology Under Her Eye (co-edited with Lindy Ryan), a women in horror project in association with the Pixels Project to prevent violence against women released in Nov 2023 from Black Spot Books. Read more at leemurray.info

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For youth events

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Lee Murray is a USA Today Bestselling author and a five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. Her titles for children include Battle of the Birds, a Sir Julius Vogel Award winner for Best Youth Novel, Misplaced, Mika, and Conclave 7. El Amanecer del Apolcalipsis Zombi (Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse, also available from IFWG), is her first title in Spanish. Lee lives in Aotearoa-New Zealand (with her well-behaved family and a naughty dog), where she writes stories and poems from her home overlooking a cow paddock.

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Lee Murray went to Hamilton Girls’ High School. At 13, she knew she wanted to be writer, but her dad suggested she get a real job, so she became a scientist. Now, in her real job as an author, here is her advice for young writers: think of it like a Mad Hatter’s tea party. No room at the literature table? Sit down anyway. Take the rabbit hole to the underworld. Conjure shrink-grow monsters, evil queens, the perfidy of time, and lonely, spiralling madness. Choose chaos as a ruling principle. Ask the hard questions. Say what you mean. Talk when you want to. Debate the intricacies of language. Hide the bodies of your friends in teapots. Cut off their heads. Reference Poe. And drink more of the beverage of your choice. Read more about Lee at https://www.leemurray.info/

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With Dan rabarts
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Dan Rabarts (Ngāti Porou) and Lee Murray are award-winning writer-editors from Aotearoa-New Zealand, winners of multiple Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows, and Bram Stoker Awards, and a Shirley Jackson Award. Together, they co-authored the Path of Ra supernatural forensic crime thriller series (Hounds of the Underworld, Teeth of the Wolf, Blood of the Sun), starring sibling sleuths Matiu and Penny Yee, and have co-edited the horror anthologies Baby Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror and At the Edge. Lee’s solo work includes horror-thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, and fiction collection Grotesque: Monster Stories, while Dan is the author of steampunk-grimdark-comic fantasy series Children of Bane. Websites: leemurray.info & dan.rabarts.com/fiction

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Film

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Lee Murray is an author, editor, poet and screenwriter, and a third-generation Chinese New Zealander. A USA Today Bestselling author with 40 titles to her credit, Lee is the winner of multiple Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows, and Bram Stoker awards, and is her country’s only recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award for psychological horror. An Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors and a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow, Lee is screenwriter (with Mia Maramara and Hweiling Ow) of feature drama Grafted, a Murray Francis/Leela Menon film by Bafta-nominated director Sasha Rainbow, currently in production. She is a cast member of TV documentary series Madness and Writers: The Untold Truth, in production from A Gypsy Life Productions. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/

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