Danny Murphy - winner 2018 Exeter Story Prize

Danny Murphy

Danny Murphy has worked as a teacher and headteacher Scotland, Malaysia and Cambodia. He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh. Though published in his professional field[1], he writes fiction to ‘reach the parts that academic prose can’t reach’.
​He won the Costa Prize in 2016 (Rogey) and the Exeter Prize in 2018  (Time to Come Home), but has had less recent success with two very different novels he’s been trying to get published: Finding Closure - a dark thriller - and All That We Can Be - the ‘coming of age’ story of a young teacher in the first year of his career. It’s difficult to get agents or publishers to commit - so he’s considering publishing these online.
Winning the Exeter Prize really motivated Danny to believe in his writing. ‘As I'm sure you know,” he said, ‘In the long lonely hours when you're stuck at your keyboard. or when you're reading a master at work (just finished reading Ian McEwan's The Children Act), it doesn't always seem that your own writing is worth reading. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who has such feelings.”
Danny’s online life is a bit uneven – improving it is on a long list, which includes starting a new novel! He can be reached at [email protected].

[1] e.g. Dealing with Dilemmas, Schooling Scotland, Everyone’s Future

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