Yannick Murphy is the author of the novels This Is the Water (2014), The Call (2011), Signed, Mata Hari (2007), Here They Come (2007), and The Sea of Trees (1997). Her story collections include Stories in Another Language (1987) and In a Bear's Eye (2008). Her children’s books include The Cold Water Witch (2010), Baby Polar (2014), and Ahwoooooooo! (2006). She is the recipient of various awards including a Pushcart Prize, a Laurence L. and Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award, a Whiting Award in Fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and a Chesterfield Screenwriting award. Her story "In a Bear's Eye" was published in the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories.
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Stories in Another LanguageFrom"The Slit"
I thought, I bet the daughter’s glad she’s dead, because what her mother was doing, throwing herself into the grave on top of the box like that, looked funny. It looked funny because her mother was fat, and it looked so much like the mother was doing the Fat Man Dance, because her arms were spread out too, as if she were waiting for her daughter to spread out her arms also, and then they could hold hands and smack bellies together and dance in circles on the box just the way we always did in the summer when we did the Fat Man Dance. Because we always did the Fat Man Dance in the summer when we ran around with no clothes on and danced a lot because it was summer.
Stories in Another Language : -
Stories in Another LanguageFrom"The Headdress"
Before Touché put the sword down Karen’s throat, he told her not to move. He told her that it was something that people had to do together. He told her that both of them had to do it right or it would not work. Touché put Karen’s head back with his hand and then he put the sword down Karen’s throat. It looked to me like Karen was quiet, but I saw her eyes blink, maybe because the rain was falling into them.
Stories in Another Language : -
Stories in Another LanguageFrom"Stories in Another Language"
On a hillside in China my father told me that he would teach me to fly by the time I was nine and that he would teach me to drive by the time I was twelve. I never understood why my father wanted me to fly first before I learned how to drive. I guess it was because he liked flying best.
I never learned how to fly.
Stories in Another Language :
“A domestic tale and unlikely crime thriller, adds a striking new wrinkle to the author’s consistently surprising body of work . . . Ms. Murphy excels at such intimate observations of everyday family life . . . A pulse-raising thriller.” —The Wall Street Journal [on This is the Water]
“Remarkable . . . The truthful evocation of family is the real triumph of The Call. There is much love in this novel, and just as much truth about the pain and pleasure of family life . . . [A] clever and beautiful book.” —The Boston Globe
“Murphy flawlessly captures a child's-eye view of a battered society and a battered family . . . Most impressive of all is [her] remarkable use of language, the expressive way she puts together ordinary words and images to create surprisingly lovely and moving metaphors.” —Wendy Smith, Los Angeles Times [on Here They Come]
“Yannick Murphy, while being one of our most daring and original writers, is first and foremost an exquisitely attuned observer of human behavior . . . Murphy’s work provides pretty much un-exceeded reading pleasure.” —Dave Eggers
Selected Works
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