John Murray | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1950 (age 68–69) Flimby, Cumberland, England |
| Occupation | novelist, short story writer |
| Period | 1985-present |
| Genre | Comedy, Satire, Spiritual thriller |
John Murray (born 1950, Flimby, Cumberland) is an English writer and novelist known for writing satirical novels on a range of subjects. He read Sanskrit at University College, Oxford.
Flimby is an English coastal village in the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria. It was historically in Cumberland. It currently forms part of the civil parish of Maryport and the Flimby ward of Allerdale Council. It is included in the Maryport South county division of Cumbria County Council.
Cumberland is a historic county of North West England that had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. It was bordered by Northumberland to the east, County Durham to the southeast, Westmorland and Lancashire to the south, and the Scottish counties of Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire to the north. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 and now forms part of Cumbria.
A writer is a person who uses written words in various styles and techniques to communicate their ideas. Writers produce various forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, romans, poetry, plays, screenplays, and essays as well as various reports and news articles that may be of interest to the public. Writers' texts are published across a range of media. Skilled writers who are able to use language to express ideas well, often contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society.
In 1984 he founded the fiction magazine Panurge , which he edited with fellow author David Almond until 1996. Panurge Publishing published Julia Darling's debut collection of short stories, Bloodlines in 1995.
David Almond FRSL is a British author who has written several novels for children and young adults from 1998, each one receiving critical acclaim.
Julia Rose Darling was an English novelist, poet and dramatist.
Murray's first novel, Samarkand, was published in 1985 (it was broadcast on BBC Radio 3)) and in 1988 he received the Dylan Thomas Award for 2 stories out of his collection, Pleasure . In 2002 his novel John Dory won a Lakeland Book of the Year Award, and his book Jazz Etc was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. His 2004 novel, Murphy's Favourite Channels , was a "Novel of the Week" in The Daily Telegraph . He has also published several other critically acclaimed novels including, Kin , Reiver Blues , Radio Activity , The Legend of Liz and Joe and A Gentleman's Relish . His latest novel The Lawless Book of Love (2018) is a satire on online dating and is available as a Kindle eBook.
The Daily Telegraph, known online as The Telegraph, is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as Daily Telegraph & Courier.
Murray currently lives in London where he teaches Creative Writing courses (www.writinginkythnos.com). He has been a regular fiction tutor at The Arvon Foundation since 1989 and every summer from 1995-2007 he led a creative writing workshop at Madingley Hall, Cambridge.
The Arvon Foundation is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom that promotes creative writing. It is based in the Free Word Centre for literature, literacy and free expression in London.
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.
Cambridge is a university city and the county town of Cambridgeshire, England, on the River Cam approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London. At the United Kingdom Census 2011, its population was 123,867 including 24,506 students. Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman and Viking ages, and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951.
Murray also writes a blog, Wild Days in Greece (johnmurraywritinginkythnos.wordpress.com), which he started when he moved to live on the Greek island of Kythnos in 2013. The blog has nearly 500 posts and covers a massive range of subjects, including London, Greece, films, books, TV series, music, recipes and politics. It also features Murray's latest short stories and a 2016 novel Passion For Beginners.
He married Annie Murray (nee Clements) in 1979, a consultant trainer and specialist in Organisational Transactional Analysis, who died in 2009. He has one daughter Ione, born 1989, a computer programmer who lives in West Yorkshire.
