Debra Murphy is the editor of Bardolatry.com, a “fansite” devoted to Shakespeare on film & stage. Debra received her B.A. in History at the University of Illinois. She met her husband, Daniel, while on a study year abroad in Austria. Though her ambition from her teenage years was to write novels, Debra’s primary job was raising a growing family of six children and she didn’t start writing in earnest until her late thirties.
After publishing a few short pieces on family spirituality in the U.S. & U.K. Catholic press in the Eighties and early Nineties, Debra’s first short story won the 1998 Kay Snow award sponsored by Willamette Writers, and was published in issue no. 37 (Winter, 2002-03) of Image.
Debra’s debut novel, The Mystery of Things, a modern-day mystery-thriller with Shakespearean themes, was published in December 2004 by Idylls Press, the small press started by Debra with the mission of “publishing the Catholic imagination.” Debra is working on a sequel to The Mystery of Things as well as a “cozy” mystery with theatrical themes. Both novels are set in Debra’s beloved adopted home of Ashland, Oregon, the crown jewel of which is the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
On the web, Debra blogs here. She was a contributing editor for Godspy, (sadly now dormant) where she published reviews and op-ed pieces on contemporary faith and culture. Debra also edits & writes reviews for CatholicFiction.net and an e-mail newsletter called Quotes for Catholic Writers.
Debra in print:
Fiction
- The Mystery of Things (novel, Idylls Press 2004)
- short story in Image Journal no. 37, Winter 2002-2003)
Non-Fiction:
- “The Martha and Mary of Parenting” (first published in the U.S. in the early ‘90s by the Daughters of St. Paul in their Family magazine, then reprinted in the April 1994 (vol. 15, NO. 3) issue of the British journal, The Sower}
- “The Family, a Small Circle of Love” (first published in—if Debra is remembering correctly—The National Catholic Register in the early ’90s.
- “Bush vs. Kerry: Holding My Nose in November,” (GodSpy, August 2004)
- “Pretty as a Picture: a Review of Thérèse” (Godspy, December 2004)
- “Wrestling with the Angel of Strangeness: The Passion of the Christ one year later” (Godspy, March 2005)
- “John Paul the Great, the Misunderstood Pope” (Godspy, April 2005)
- “Cracking Shakespeare’s Catholic Code: an Interview with Claire Asquith” (Godspy, November 2005)
- “Mel Gibson: Signs and Contradictions” (Godspy, December 2006)
- “A Christian Looks at the Fiction of Ian McEwan” (Issue 10, 2008, of Second Spring Journal, and reprinted online at Catholic Exchange)
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