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MEET PAT MURPHY
by Bonnie O'Brian

Did you write stories when you were growing up? at school? Or at home as a hobby? As a young child, or as a teenager, or both?

Pat Murphy

I didn't start writing stories until I was in college. As a child, I was a voracious reader, and I often told myself stories that were reworked versions of the stories that I'd read. In these internal retellings (never written down or spoken aloud), I found a place for myself in ever story. In my version of Tarzan, the ape man had a fourth grade girl as a sidekick.

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

As a child, it never occurred to me that I could become a writer. It seemed to me that one didn't become a writer, but rather that writing was a calling, a sort of divine priesthood. To become a writer, one had to be touched by the divine. It wasn't until I was in college that a professor told me that I was a very good writer. And I realized that it actually was possible to become a writer. These days, I think of writing as both a calling and a profession, but it still seems magical that I can actually write for a living.

When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career? (or a career in illustrating? or just art in general?)

My major in college was biology. I've always balanced my fiction writing with work as a science writing — both for children and for adults.

Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

When I began writing, I decided that I would send out stories until I had 100 rejection slips — or I sold a story. A story sold when I had accumulated 7 or 8 rejections, and I thought I was in! Then it was two years before I sold another story. But by that time, I was hooked and couldn't quit.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

My science fiction writing has won a number of awards, including the Nebula Award for best novel, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Seiun Award, the latter for best foreign science fiction novel translated into Japanese. EXPLORATOPIA is in the 2008 Middle School Collection.

When is your next book going to be in book stores?

My children's novel, THE WILD GIRLS, has just reached the bookstores. (Viking Books, November 2007) THE WILD GIRLS is my first children's novel and my first novel that's not labeled science fiction or fantasy. It's about a twelve-year-old named Joan who is sure that she is going to be miserable when her family moves from Connecticut to California. Then she meets a girl who calls herself Fox and lives with her author dad in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. Joan and Fox become friends and begin writing stories together. The Wild Girls is about friendship, the power of story, and how coming of age means finding your own answers-rather than simply taking adults on faith.I wrote this book for the twelve-year-old I once was. When I was a girl, I felt that I did not belong in the well-manicured world of the suburbs. Like Fox and Joan, I struggled with family issues. When I was young, I didn't meet anyone like Fox's dad Gus or the girl's writing instructor Verla Volante. But I now know that the world is filled with such people-and I've done my best to become one of them. This book came from the joy of imagining what meeting Verla and Gus would have been like when I was Joan's age.