About this episode

Lee Murray discusses the honesty of horror writing and the importance of personal experience in storytelling.

What if the genre you dismissed as too dark was actually the most honest thing you could read? Lee Murray has spent twenty years writing horror from the edge of the world. She’s won five Bram Stoker Awards, a New Zealand Prime Minister Award for Literary Achievement, and a medal from the King. And she’ll be the first to tell you she’s barely making grocery money. That gap between recognition and reward is just one of the things Lee is refreshingly honest about in this conversation. She also talks about what it really means to put yourself in a story, why horror is one of the most grown-up genres out there, and how building community from the bottom of the world changed everything for her. Highlights “Write what you know” means something deeper than you think. Most writers hear that phrase and think about surface-level experience. When she was starting out, Lee did too. She wrote about marathon running because she had run 25 of them. She knew the material. But something was still missing. It wasn’t until she started writing from her identity as an Asian woman in a Western country, about her experience with depression and anxiety, and the tension between cultures she carries every…

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Standout Creatives: Business, marketing, and creativity tips for solopreneurs launching their ideas podcast page.