Debra Murphy was raised in Champaign, IL and 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 mothering 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, Debra’s first short story, “Yardsticks,” 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 mystery-thriller with literary (especially Shakespearean) and Catholic themes, was published in December 2004 by Idylls Press, the small press started by Debra with the mission of “publishing the Catholic imagination.” At present, Debra is working on several screenplays with her writing partner and son, John, and a mystery/comedy of manners set in her hometown, Ashland, Oregon.
On the web, Debra has been a contributing editor for Godspy, where she published reviews and op-ed pieces on contemporary faith and culture. An avid moviegoer, reader, Shakespeare fan, and WordPress geek, Debra also edits & writes reviews for bardolatry, a website devoted to Shakespeare-on-film, an e-mail newsletter called Quotes for Catholic Writers, and her homepage, debramurphy.com.
A member of Willamette Writers, Oregon Writers Colony and Sisters-in-Crime, Debra lives in beautiful Ashland with her husband and six children.
Debra in print:
Fiction
- The Mystery of Things (novel, Idylls Press 2004)
- “Yardsticks” (short story, Image Journal no. 37, Winter 2002-2003)
Non-Fiction:
- “Catholic Groups Behaving Badly” in This Rock magazine, July/Aug 2011.
- “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)
Deb on the Web:
- Debra’s Amazon page
- Idylls Press
- Idylls Press Reviews
- Debra’s homepage
- Debra on Twitter
- Debra on Facebook
- Debra on LinkedIn
- Bardolatry
- This is Ashland
Debra’s book reviews on CatholicFiction.net:
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