lee murray

Lee Murray is New Zealand’s most awarded speculative fiction writer and editor.  Her many works include the Taine McKenna thriller series that began with Into The Mist, the Path of Ra, supernatural crime-noir that Lee co-writes with Dan Rabarts, dozens of stories, novellas, and anthologies, and recently co-editing the collection Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, which won both the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards. 
 
Lee’s latest release is Tortured Willows: Bent - Bowed - Unbroken, a poetry anthology featuring ​​four female Southeast Asian writers of horror. 

Follow Lee on twitter and visit her website to explore her work.

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Outline

Here are the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) - Introduction 
(00:57) - Growing up in New Zealand. Weird Tales. GenreCon. Horror writing partnership with Dan Rabarts 
(13:04) - Bravery of writing yourself. Connecting with the community creates opportunities. Work vs fun
(25:47) - Connections as a superpower. Navigating mental health and young people 
(36:14) - The Other: using mental health as an antagonist in popular culture. Isolation in New Zealand. Katherine Mansfield’s The Savage Hour
(41:17) - Tortured Willows: family, and asian female identity. Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Geneve Flynn. Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women 
(53:44) - Expectations on Asian women: Tiger mum, submissive and sexual. Impossible asian beauty ideals. Cultural identity and tropes
(1:02:22) - Popular culture and quality in the commercial field. Literary vs speculative fiction. Young NZ readers and writers
(1:13:57) - Funding challenges for NZ Literature and film. Creatives are essential workers 
(1:22:11) - Finishing up. 

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