might someday say, ‘Did you know that Auntie Sabina wrote Writing From a Different Place a book?’” A Profile of 2003 PEN/Faulkner So amazing was Murray’s first assignment that Martin “thought it must have been plagiarized, it was so strong and Award Winner Sabina Murray sophisticated.” But when Murray continued to turn in equally By Terry Hong stunning pieces, Martin recognized her as a “natural.” Martin hen Sabina Murray first heard that she had won the insists, “As someone who has taught creative writing for 20 prestigious 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award for her short years, I can honestly say that this doesn’t happen very often— Wstory collection The Caprices, she thought a mistake maybe twice in a lifetime of teaching.” had been made. Not until the house began to rapidly fill with When her undergrad school days were over, Murray “tried flowers and e-mails arrived from around the world did she real- a lot of crazy things” over the next three years. She sold ize that “this was a big deal.” clothes, shoes, and greeting cards. She was a booking agent With a major award in hand, Murray is looking at her for a modeling agency, then tried cocktail waitressing, which career through new eyes: “Everything just feels different. proved to be “disastrous,” she confesses. Before, I felt like what I was writing wouldn’t All along, Murray, now 35, knew she wanted to be a writer. necessarily get read. Now, it’s not that every- “Writing is just a part of my personality,” she thing I write will be embraced, but I feel like So amazing was says. Even as she was selling balloons at the Old there will be readers out there for my work, and Murray’s first Port Festival in Portland, Maine, she was grac- that’s a very different place for me from which assignment that Martin ing the pages of chic Vanity Fair for writing her to write.” “thought it must have first novel, Slow Burn, about the decadent That different place, post-PEN/Faulkner, has been youth of 1980s Manila—a book she managed to become literal, with a recent move to a house in write and sell before she was 21. Amherst—the first that Murray and her poet plagiarized, it was Six years later, with a stopover as a Michener husband, John Hennessey, have bought, where so strong and fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, they are finally feeling settled with their two sophisticated.” where she earned a master’s in English and cre- young sons. “I feel so grown-up,” she laughs. In But when Murray ative writing, Murray began what would become this new domicile, Murray waxes about her continued to turn The Caprices, which captures the brutal effects of study, her “room of one’s own,” which is just off the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The title the porch and secluded so as to be “nice and in equally stunning comes from a series of Goya etchings by the same quiet.” pieces, Martin name that depict the Spanish Civil War. “They The move was precipitated by a new teaching recognized her as capture the brutality of war,” says Murray. “I gig as an assistant professor at the University of a “natural.” found it interesting that Goya was trying to re- Amherst. “I have a real job with create the experience of war in an art form. So grad students,” she says with true joy. “Before, I had great high that was the challenge I made for myself.” school students to teach at , Andover, where In spite of the utter brutality contained within the pages of I was writer-in-residence, but now I’m meeting people who are Murray’s book, there is no denying that the collection is indeed just on the brink of their careers, and that’s very exciting.” an artistic achievement. “I was not surprised to find it one of Of course, Murray will be nothing like the freshman com- the most original and impressive collections of short stories I position teacher she had at , where have ever read,” says Martin. “The stories build, one upon the she was an undergrad, who told her she wrote English as if it other, but this is no novel in the form of connected short sto- were a foreign language. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to a ries. It’s more like a guided missile—when it is over, it explodes Caucasian American father and Filipina mother, and brought in the mind of the reader.” up in Australia and the Philippines, Murray is incredibly facile For five years Murray lived with these stories, which some- with accents and languages—so much so that when living in times proved to be a difficult challenge. “When people write Australia, she spoke Australian memoirs they have a sense of con- English outside the home and BOOKS BY SABINA MURRAY quering their fears through their American English (Boston The Caprices (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) writing. But in writing The Caprices, Brahmin, to be exact, from her Slow Burn (Ballantine, 1990) I had no sense of cathartic release. father’s side) within because her A Carnivore’s Inquiry Instead, I felt like I unleashed mother found the Aussie twang (forthcoming Grove/Atlantic, May 2004) demons.” In spite of her own per- hard on the ears. sonal struggles, Murray remained Ignoring the teacher who made too many assumptions, determined to tell the stories. “World War II was a horrible Murray eventually signed up for a creative writing class with time—all war is horrible—but that horror is something every- acclaimed author Valerie Martin, whose latest book, Property, one needs to be aware of.” is a quietly agonizing masterpiece. “She had a yen to write,” Ironically, becoming a mother helped Murray establish Martin recalls, “so that, she said, her nieces and nephews greater empathy with her characters. “The picture was horri-

Reprinted from The Bloomsbury Review®, Vol. 24, #1. © 2004, Terry Hong. All rights reserved. May not be copied, reproduced, transmitted in any fashion without the written consent of Terry Hong; [email protected]. ble before, but when I began thinking of the characters in ducks in a row, so to speak.” No doubt, she’ll continue to stay terms of my own child, the picture became so much worse. I right on target.  found an authenticity of voice from a general emotional REVIEWER: Terry Hong writes frequently on books, theater, impulse because I was not physically there to witness the hor- and film. She is coauthor of Eastern Standard Time: A Guide rors of war myself.” to Asian Influence on American Culture: From Astro Boy to Zen Even though she was not there, Murray’s family was. And Buddhism. having spent part of her childhood in the Philippines, Murray knows firsthand that war remains a prevailing memory among her extended web of relatives. She never met her grandfather and one uncle, for example, because war consumed them before she was born. Murray’s mother lives with the painful memories of loss, not just of family but of friends who disap- peared. “I’ve always been very antiwar. It’s hard to come out of my background without being that way.” But more than being antiwar, Murray wants to set the record straight. “The Philippines was never at war. It just hap- pened to be a U.S. territory at the time, which makes this an episode of American history—one that doesn’t get taught enough, that doesn’t get enough exposure,” she says. Exposure is one thing Murray is no longer lacking. Riding on the major success of The Caprices, the new year will see the imminent release of the film Beautiful Country, for which the legendary (Days of Heaven, Thin Red Line) commissioned Murray to write the screenplay. The story of a mixed-race Vietnamese Caucasian man who arrives in the United States in search of his American father, the film stars , Bai Ling, and Damien Nguyen. In February 2004, Murray’s story “Folly” appears in the anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World, edited by Jessica Hagedorn, author of the classic Dogeaters and most recently Dream Jungle. Hagedorn adds, “The Caprices is one of my favorite books in recent years. I found it mature, thoughtful, dark, often powerful, and mesmerizing.” Coming in May 2004 is Murray’s latest endeavor, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, which she describes as “a novel that looks at cannibalism, art, literature, and exploration.” According to her editor, Elizabeth Schmitz, vice president and senior editor at Grove/Atlantic, Murray is “pretty much an editor’s dream author ... with a promising and varied writing career ahead of her.” Schmitz refers to Murray’s writing as “fresh, exhilarating, and daring,” and describes the book as “full of wit and black humor.” Inquiry’s heroine, Katherine, is “thrilling ... charm- ing, disturbed and thoroughly unreliable,” with a penchant for “minutely detailed ‘digressions’ into carnivorous moments in history, art, and literature. It’s a fascinating way of depicting a psychopathic mind-set,” says Schmitz. Indeed, Inquiry is a crisscrossing, mind-boggling exploration of everything unex- pected. It will leave you both scratching your head and want- ing more. Oh, just you wait. So what’s next for the multitalented, many-faceted Murray? Another screen adaptation is already in the works, and she’s also begun research on her next book (no details yet)—all while teaching her students and raising her two children. She has much to accomplish in that new room of her own, her “different place.” And as she methodically organizes and lays out her many projects, she remarks, “I’m lining up all my

Reprinted from The Bloomsbury Review®, Vol. 24, #1. © 2004, Terry Hong. All rights reserved. May not be copied, reproduced, transmitted in any fashion without the written consent of Terry Hong; [email protected].