About
Michael Murphy
Hello
I’m a writer of short fiction and lover of long odds.
Michael Murphy once bought acid from a guy in a van. He is aware things aren’t as they seem and unconcerned about being short.
“My life is looking up,” he joked. “Not for the bio,” I told him.
He wonders why he is writing in the third-person. Why I am writing in the third person. I often live in it but don’t often write in it. And I’ve written. Marketing pablum, halfhearted manifestos, full-throated confessions. There’ve been newspaper articles and restaurant reviews and advertorial. Taglines, headlines, and guidelines. Santa received a long and deservedly scathing critique. A lifetime of promiscuous scribbling. Until…
2017
In 2017, I took part in a fiction workshop in London with poet and novelist Michèle Roberts. At the time, my focus was fiction-adjacent. Satire. A column in the Hampstead Village Voice about our collective overdose on convenience. And although I returned from the workshop to this serial evisceration of norms, a seed was planted.
2021
Said seed sprouted in 2021. I revisited the workshopped story, “Symptomatic,” eventually saw it published in the Notre Dame Review, and committed myself to fiction. A late start but a start. A lifelong writer who began to write meaningfully. Since, I’ve been featured in a handful of reputable publications and played bridesmaid in various competitions – most recently, I was named a finalist for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize and nominated for a Pushcart.
Schools
Yes, I went to school. The University of Georgia comes to mind. I’m confident I was there for a time. The University of North Carolina in Charlotte gave me a degree. I mention this as I feel I must. Apart from the encouragement of an Irish lit professor who wanted to sleep with me and a philosophy professor who wanted me to come to class, college was largely the business of part-time hustles, being drunk, and writing bad poetry. All of which informed my writing more than academia.
Like all of us, I was born.
Unlike most of us, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, and London have all had a go at me. Winter Park, Florida is taking its turn. My wife and I have lived near the Rollins University campus since 2017. It is lovely here and we can’t wait to leave.
What am I reading now?
The Copywriter by Daniel Poppick
What am I writing now?
A story about the space between us