Featured Interview With Patrick Michael Murphy
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Small town guy. Was raised in New Lenox, IL, when it had 1,200 people. I now live in San Antonio, Texas, with something like 1,300,000 others. Crazy. Cars everywhere. But there is something about the culture that’s fun too. I like quiet. I like trees. I like cold beer on a hot afternoon and the sound of people laughing. I like volleyball. I feel like I’ve worked really hard in my life and reached retirement age with a lot of others who aren’t sure they’ll ever be able to take it easier… but then, I made my own choices and had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. Life has provided me plenty of things to write about.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’d like to say I remember someone reading to me, but I guess I’ve forgotten that. Great parents, but I don’t remember books being part of it, until I was about 9 or 10. I think one of my first favorites was Gentle Ben, and then, My Side of the Mountain. Great stuff to a kid who was already ready to get out and see what lived in the wild…
And the wild never disappointed me. Rarely do books, as well.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Wallace Stegner and Angle of Repose. Peter Matthiessen and The Snow Leopard. Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Stienbeck, Grapes of Wrath. I just read a fantastic book by Philipp Meyer, The Son. I also loved John Muir, for his nature writing. These all inspired me greatly, but not as much as the little wrinkled note on the kitchen table that says, I love you.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
A Forest A River and me, is a memoir about my building a small off-grid cabin on a 20 acre piece of North Idaho riverfront wilderness. It is one of my favorite adventures that tested me, fulfilled me, and ripped me open really… I was alone much of the time in a place I often had to walk four hours to reach. I lived with candle and lamplight only the first year, used a hole in the ground for a toilet, carried water from the river, bathed outside much of time…
I felt free and alive unlike what most of us ever feel these days. But it also had challenges I was not truly prepared for…
It took me about a year of writing to get what I felt was a whittled down first draft. It wasn’t like writing my novel or my essay collection… it was filled with emotion I had felt as deeply as we ever feel. I didn’t understand all of what happened to me out there, and so in writing, much resurfaced, and questions came back to haunt me full force… and so did the beauty. My, it was just so unbelievably lovely out there.
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