Sabina Murray -

Sabina Murray is the author of eight books of fiction including the novel Valiant Gentlemen, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, The Caprices, a PEN/Faulkner Award winner, The Human Zoo and the recent Muckross Abbey, a collection of stories. Also a screenwriter, she wrote the script for Beautiful Country, an Independent Spirit Award finalist, developing the story with Terrence Malick. Sabina's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an N.E.A. Grant, a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and a Magdalen College Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. She is Professor of English in the MFA Program of Poets and Writers at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Books

The Human Zoo

Ting Klein returns to the Philippines to find the city roiling in the grip of a dictator...kind of like The Quiet American if Fowler was a woman, Phuong was trans, and Pile was Vietnamese--although everyone in the book is Filipino

Valiant Gentlemen

Valiant Gentlemen was a 2016 New York Times Notable Book and included on the Washington Post Best Books of 2016 list.

Tales of the New World

Men and women—eccentrics, scientists, criminals, scholars, and artists—are lured by the unknown and driven to pursue it.

Forgery

Rupert Brigg questions the authenticity of everything, even himself.

A Carnivore's Inquiry

Katherine Shea has strange appetites, a love of art, and a string of unlucky boyfriends.

The Caprices

PEN/Faulkner Award winning collection of short stories

Slow Burn

The dark underbelly of Manila society in the decadent eighties.

Selected Links

The Rumpus

I talk to Margaret Lee about the joys of editing

HUFFPOST, After Sebald

Lithub

Sabina in conversation with Jane Ciabattari about The Human Zoo

New York Times Magazine

Letters of Recommendation: Spam, because I actually do eat Spam

LitHub

Gina Apostol discusses her provocative novel The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

Cosmonauts Avenue

Philosophy, a personal essay about my mother

VICE

Man of the People, How could Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, despite his policy of murder, be so popular?

World Literature Today

My Mother, Migration, and Me, a meditation on my mother's immigrant status

LitHub

How Can We Make the MFA Workshop More Hospitable to Writers of Color, Ocean Vuong and I talk about silencing, compassion, and pedagogy

The Rumpus

Every Woman Is A Nation Unto Herself: A Conversation with Sabina Murray, I chat with Edie Meidav about the influences on Valiant Gentlemen

LitHub

What Can Historical Fiction Accomplish That History Does Not, Time theory and a prickly encounter with a "famous American writer."

Huffington Post

After Sebald, an essay that looks at Sebald's influence on contemporary writers

Paris Review

Wordsworth's she dwelt among the untrodden ways, essay about my grandfather's relationship with a poem

photo credit John Cairns

"This is a tongue-in-cheek take on gothic fiction, though the stories don't veer into humor or parody; rather, Murray tweaks familiar elements. …There's a dark energy that looms over each of the stories, with most of the characters being academics, art historians, or artists. Horror readers who enjoy more prosaic elements will admire Murray's drawn-out, elaborate pacing. Overall, it's a well-written, satisfying collection with mystery elements for fans of Sarah Waters and Kate Morton."—Booklist

"I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale. Packed with compelling, nuanced lives and the deaths that haunt them, each story is a séance—an invitation for unsettled spirits to let their presence be known, "desperate for someone to supply the narrative". Murray supplies it with great style and an uncanny knowingness, leaving room for our imagination to fill in the suggestive spaces with our own dark dread." MONA AWAD

"Moors, mists, and mirrors: all expected in classic ghost stories. Careening cars, TV sets with minds of their own, and cellphones: Welcome to a new iteration of spectral spookiness… each tale presents a uniquely crafted poltergeist. These are not your father's ghost stories." –Kirkus Reviews

Sabina Murray is the author of eight books of fiction including the novel Valiant Gentlemen, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, The Caprices, a PEN/Faulkner Award winner, and the recent The Human Zoo. Muckross Abbey, a collection of stories, is forthcoming March '23. Also a screenwriter, she wrote the script for Beautiful Country, an Independent Spirit Award finalist, developing the story with Terrence Malick. Sabina's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an N.E.A. Grant, a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and a Magdalen College Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. She is Professor of English in the MFA Program of Poets and Writers at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

MUCKROSS ABBEY Library Journal Starred Review

"The stories themselves are delightfully abundant with well-wrought spookiness...With frequent nods to both contemporary and classic ghost-story writers (Daphne Du Maurier, Henry James), the success of these stories lies not just in the well-crafted writing but in the conscious mixing of a shape-shifting old world with an unreliably secure modern world. A masterly recharging of a treasured literary tradition that Murray clearly loves and respects.

illustration Gabriel Hennessy

"...she was not allowed to go outside alone, and she said, 'But Mummy, I wasn't alone. I was with the Mad Hatter.' Clever little girl. I couldn't be angry at that, even though we were reading Alice together and hadn't reached the bit about the Hatter yet, and I knew she'd been looking ahead. I told myself there was no reason to be concerned, but then I saw him."

"Saw who?"

"A man at the far edge of the field. I was hanging out the laundry in the early morning and there was still a blanket of haze on the fields, nothing but birdsong really. But then I saw him. The wheat was waist high and he stood completely still in the nodding grain..."

excerpt from "The Third Boy," from Muckross Abbey

read all of it on MEDIUM

Illustration Gabriel Hennessy