Women in Horror: Lee Murray, ONZM
Writing horror and speculative fiction from New Zealand
Today we’re talking to Lee Murray, ONZM, all the way from New Zealand! Lee Murray ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit) is a writer, editor, poet and screenwriter from Aotearoa New Zealand, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, including novels, collections, anthologies, nonfiction, poetry, and several books for children, Lee holds a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction, and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Among her recent works are feature film Grafted (directed by Sasha Rainbow), horror anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press) co-edited with Dave Jeffery, and prose-poetry collection, NZSA Cuba Press Prize-winner Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press). Her book Oversight: Erasure Poetry, written with Carina Bissett, publishes today. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/
How long have you been writing? What brought you to it, and what are important highlights of your writing journey?
LM: Storytelling has been part of the heft and weave of my life, I think since I first drew breath. A means of connection. A way to create meaning. To halt the interminable thump of that heart beneath the floorboards. To keep breathing… Obviously, the writing came later. I do remember trying to write before I had the skills though, voluminous finger paintings in kindergarten, drawing with a stick in the sand during trips to the beach. I lost my way for a while, in the bustle of lessons and degrees and raising children, but eventually my husband saw it for what it was, a vital part of me, and gave me permission to give myself permission to write. I became a fulltime writer in 2006, beginning by taking some courses to understand the craft (and for the confidence), and my first book, a children’s title, was published by a small New Zealand publisher in 2010. There was a period of wanderlust, a few years in the desert where I tried my hand at other genres, before I realised that horror and dark fiction was my home, the place where, weirdly, I’m not afraid to explore the things that terrify me the most. Highlights: my first story sale “Forecast for April” in Bravado; that first literary recognition, the Sir Julius Vogel Award for children’s title Battle of the Birds; the HWA Mentor of the Year Award (I just know my dad would be bursting with pride); life membership of New Zealand’s longest-standing writers’ group; two Bram Stokers in the midst of a pandemic, the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award in 2023 (my country’s highest literary accolade); and a royal honour for service to speculative fiction and horror in 2025.
What kind of horror do you write? What brought you to the horror genre in particular, and what keeps you around?
LM: I think the best way to describe my brand of horror, which isn’t a brand at all really, is horror that speaks to my experience. Wherein I eviscerate myself with a spoon and call it a story. I write Aotearoa-New Zealand horror, Asian diaspora horror, mental illness horror. Horror at the intersection of culture and myth, in that liminal space at the edge of reality. Mostly my hope is to write horror that is both entertaining and thoughtful. Scary and authentic. And with not too many typos. One thing I don’t call my work is literary horror. I think this is a snooty term meant to elevate one person’s writing, or one group of writers, over another. It’s been used by commentators in the mainstream as a way to sideline and denigrate genre writers, or self-published writers, or other writers (choose your own reason). To see it used in horror kinda gives me the ick. We’re better than that. As far as I’m concerned, people can like what they like. There’s space for all of us, for everyone’s story. That’s what keeps me around: the people and their stories. Wonderful talented friends whose work sings and who I can’t get enough of. Write faster, friends. I can’t wait to read you.
Can you tell us about your books?
LM: This is the part of writing (and of being a writer) that I’m not very good at: the self-promo. I find it physically painful. This is partly because I am a Kiwi and as a nation we suffer from tall-poppy syndrome, where we take a sickle to any blossom daring to raise its head above the others, which makes self-promotion feel dangerous and confrontational. And it’s partly because I am an Asian woman and subject to centuries of tradition that demand we be quiet and submissive, not shouty and loud. We’re meant to put our own needs aside in service of the community. That probably explains why I prefer to lift other voices ahead of my own. However, if anyone is interested in checking out my work, my website is a good place to start. Maybe sign up to my newsletter while you’re there. I never send more than four newsletters a year. In 2025, I sent one. Physically painful, remember. https://www.leemurray.info/
What piece of writing is the most meaningful to you and why?
LM: If we’re talking about my own writing then I guess it would be my prose-poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, which explores experiences of Chinese women in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past century as seen through the lens of the shapeshifting fox spirit of Asian myth. A mix of poetry and prose, myth and reality, history and memoir, it’s a work which addresses my not-belonging in the country of my birth. It was the first book of mine to be published here in New Zealand in over a decade and that has meant a lot to me. And despite its brevity (just 22,000 words), it’s simply the hardest thing I’ve ever written.
What books or authors have influenced your work? What works do you think we should be reading?
LM: I really can’t answer this as there isn’t enough space on the page. Everything I read or have read informs my thinking and my writing in some way. But for the form, classics I have loved for all time include Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr Suess, read in my dad’s voice. A mantra to live by. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, the book that made me decide I wanted to grow up and be a writer. Pride and Prejudice by Austen… One thing that’s been disappointing has been the absence of books that speak to my experience growing up as an anxious piglet Chinese New Zealander. I’m sixty now and not much has changed (except where I have written those stories myself). The thing is, everyone deserves to see themselves in fiction. To feel seen. A dream of mine is to one day have my work appear on someone’s ‘books or authors who have influenced you’ list. To give readers and writers that trill of recognition seems like a worthy goal.
Are there any unique challenges you’ve faced in your writing journey?
LM: Unique challenges…
Being a Kiwi writer. Being stuck out on the end of the world is tricky, especially when there are effectively no publishers (other than micro-presses) of genre fiction in this country. Add to that an ageing reader cohort, fewer and fewer independent bookstores, and a severe lack of support for the literary arts by successive governments, it feels as if there is no room for us here. Kiwi horror and speculative writers must either self-publish or seek publishing venues elsewhere. Even if you decide to forge onwards, support is limited; I can count the number of Kiwi literary agencies on the fingers of one hand and still have some digits left over. For those of us who are published aboard, it’s hard to get our work into readers’ hands. Shipping costs usually amount to more than twice or three times the cost of a book, so understandably some publishers can’t afford to send me contributor copies. Overall, I think we suffer a bit from out of sight, out of mind here. Whereas my country often hosts international authors at conferences and events, New Zealand writers, particularly genre writers, are rarely invited. The costs, particularly in one direction, appear insurmountable.
Being a writer of horror. That perception that horror isn’t proper literature. It’s the pervasive narrowmindedness, the shortsightedness of publishers and readers. Those people who have been blinded by B-grade movies, who perceive horror and speculative writing to be all about chainsaws and monsters under the bed. Even some of my dearest friends dismiss my work out of hand with their breezy “oh I don’t read horror’ comments. I’m exhausted from the effort of trying to open people’s minds to the beauty and nuance of horror literature.
What are your thoughts about being a woman writing horror at this particular moment in history? What challenges do we face?
LM: The Mathilda Effect is alive and well, even in horror, a genre that stands on the pillars of women writers and which is known for being subversive and transgressive. While personally I feel very lucky, opportunities for women writers are fewer and less frequent than those offered to men, and there is a significant pay gap, with women often carrying the lion’s share of the volunteer load (and usually none of the credit). These days it is the environment we’re living in, with its brazen, brutal trumpeting of misogyny that scares me. It’s open season for abuse and oppression of our gender, normalised through legislation and rhetoric. I wish I could say that I’m galvanised to write, to spit in the eye of this new patriarchy (which looks a lot like the old patriarchy just bolder and richer), but like many others I’m struggling with a strange paralysis. That said, I’m extremely proud to have been part of the first ever all-women final (short story) in the history of the Bram Stokers, and also the first all-PoC final (poetry), so perhaps there is some hope, and horror, with its focus on the things that engender fear, offers our best chance for change.
I do have a book releasing over Women in Horror month on International Women’s Day (8 March). It’s a poetry collaboration with my dear friend, US writer and poet Carina Bissset. Called Oversight: Erasure Poetry, it examines woman’s erasure through time, parsing women’s writings to find the untold stories in their own words and supported with accompanying vignettes. While I wouldn’t call it your traditional horror work, its subject matter, addressing women’s erasure throughout history, has meant the poems have tended to the dark side. To give you an idea, I’ll leave you with this excerpt from my poem, “Toshiko Kishisa,” which was plucked from a translation of “Daughters in Boxes,” a famous speech that the former courtesan delivered at Otsu on 12 October 1883:
daughters in boxes
girl-creatures
no hands and feet, unable to speak
daughters in boxes
I eat one
pant and retch wide
filled with good daughter
Thanks for being part of this, and thanks for being part of this writing community!
Thanks for having me!
Find Lee online:
Website: https://www.leemurray.info/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lee.murray.393/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leemurraykiwi/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lee-murray
Threads: @leemurraykiwi
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/leemurraywriter.bsky.social