Interview With Author Sean Murphy
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts and direct the Center for Story at Shenandoah University. I’ve been publishing fiction, poetry, reviews (of music, movie, book, food), and essays on the technology industry for over twenty years. I’ve appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Forbes and AdAge. I was a longtime columnist for PopMatters, and my work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, The New York Post, The Good Men Project, Writer’s Digest, Memoir Magazine, Northern Virginia Magazine, and many other publications. My poems have been widely anthologized, including the collections Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era, This Is What America Looks Like, Lo-Fi Poetry Series: Poet Sounds, and Written in Arlington: Poems for Arlington, VA.
I was previously the writer-in-residence at Noepe Center for Literary Arts at Martha’s Vineyard, and in 2017 founded the arts non-profit 1455. My memoir PLEASE TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE was released in 2013. My novel NOT TO MENTION A NICE LIFE (2015) was followed by my first two collections of non-fiction, MURPHY’S LAW, VOL. ONE and VOL. TWO (2016, 2017). My chapbooks THE BLACKENED BLUES (Finishing Line Press) and RHAPSODIES IN BLUE (Kelsay Books) were published in 2021 and 2023. My next poetry collection, KINDS OF BLUE (Kelsay Books) and his collection of short fiction THIS KIND OF MAN (Unsolicited Press) both published in 2024. He has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and PLEASE TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE was winner of the 2022 Memoir Prize.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
This Kind of Man offers an unvarnished look at life in 21st-century America, excavating the complicated, tender, wild truth of what it is to be a man across generations and relationships. We see that our received notions of manhood and masculinity are inculcated—from the beginning and by design—to ensure willing participation in a system where the overwhelming majority are excluded from the start. We witness the way these dysfunctions are handed down like inheritance, and how every cliché, from fighting to drinking to intolerance of dissent and distrust of others, is a carefully constructed trap, preventing solidarity, empathy, and love (for others, for oneself).
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’ve been writing long enough that I’ve figured out to have a regular, unbreakable routine is either an incredible privilege or the sign of dangerous OCD. As such, I prioritize writing and fit it in whenever I can, and it’s always easier when a particular piece or project is going well and nothing else matters until it’s complete!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
While I would hesitate to draw any flattering comparisons between myself and these two masters of the short story, I believe This Kind of Man is in the vein of both George Saunders and Tim O’Brien (thinking especially of In Persuasion Nation and The Things They Carried), as it seeks to take an unflinching look at people in crisis, describing the ways this world has pushed them to some type of breaking point. Several of these stories take place in so-called flyover states, so I feel obliged to send a loving shout out to the great Breece D’J Pancake, who wrote so indelibly about Appalachia.
What are you working on now?
I’m polishing off my fourth collection of poetry; I have another book of short stories I’m about half-way through with, and I’m also outlining and drafting a follow-up memoir.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
No writer can be aloof to a social media presence; I’m at seanmurphy.net, I blog at bullmurph.com, and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at @bullmurph.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
First and foremost: read and write all the time. It’s the most basic and ostensibly simple advice, but it’s crucial. I meet aspiring writers all the time who talk about what they want to do (or will do) “eventually.” Writing material that aspires to connect in a meaningful way with a broader audience involves hours and years of hard, often unfulfilling work. Don’t quit your day job, but treat your writing like it’s your life. Seek to execute sentences and scenes you haven’t encountered, even in books you admire. Work toward cultivating a unique style and ways to convey familiar -and unfamiliar–themes with honesty and originality. Turn off the television, shut off your phone, and understand the real dirty work that results in quality writing involves lots of long, lonely hours. If you aren’t feeling it with all of your being, how can you hope to engage a potential reader? Above all, trust yourself and love yourself: writing is necessarily a solitary endeavor, but you are connecting yourself with a community of special human beings who have made our world demonstrably better. Celebrate the idea of contributing something of yourself to that tradition.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I think often of this amazing quote, courtesy of V.S. Pritchett:
“Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.”
I’ll say, as someone who has been writing (with varying degrees of success and consistency) over more than two decades, there’s literally something from any writer’s observations of what works for them that I can identify with, understand, or seek to emulate. I also know this type of dedication, discipline, and focus is not limited to artists; mastery involves an almost impossible combination of obsession, passion, respect (for the subject; for the self), ambition, and not lastly, balance.
What are you reading now?
I’m greatly enjoying my friend Whitney Collins’s forthcoming collection RICKY & OTHER LOVE STORIES (Sarabande).
What’s next for you as a writer?
Write, read, write, read, so on and forever.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
MOBY DICK
CATCH-22
INVISIBLE MAN
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF Czesław Miłosz
Author Websites and Profiles
Sean Murphy’s Social Media Links
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