Episode 11: Everything is a Story - Lee Murray

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author / editor, essayist, screenwriter, and poet from New Zealand. A USA Today bestselling author, four-time Bram Stoker Award winner, with four Australian Shadows, 12 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, as well as a Shirley Jackson award, Lee is also an NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow and Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow. 

In this high energy conversation, Lee gives great insight into what being a writer is like, from working collaboratively in writing communities, working for below minimum wage, and feeling like an imposter even after 15 successful novels and multiple international awards, all the while maintaining ‘this is the best job in the world!’ 

Committing fully to writing later in life and finding out at fifty years of age that for most of her life she had unknowingly suffered from anxiety and depression, Lee describes how all of her life experiences, including working as a scientist representing New Zealand at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have proudly contributed to her success as a ‘female Asian horror writer’. 

Whether or not you have any desire to become a writer, or even if you’re like Lee’s husband and don’t often read fiction, this interview is compulsive viewing/listening because the energy, enthusiasm, and passion from Lee is infectious, and her wisdom definitely worth sharing. She clearly demonstrates that she has found, and is living in her element, every day.  

We invite guests who are living a life that is a story worth retelling. Lee believes everything is a story and hers is motivational. Lee is someone who knew she wanted to write as a child but was happy that she took her parents advice and went and got a ‘real job’ first. By doing so, when the time was right, she could apply her knowledge and wisdom to her research for the amazing stories she has crafted that are an inspiration to so many people across the world.   

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