Interview with Lee Murray By David Kempf
When did you first become interested in writing? It’s hard to separate writing from reading, isn’t it? From the moment I was born, my parents read to me, instilling a passion for books and story that I’ve never been able to wean myself from. I remember loving words, and the sounds the words made, and I liked the shape of them. I think I was two when I learned the shape of the word Christmas, with its festive, bauble-shaped ‘i’ in the middle. I remember struggling to decipher ‘who’ from ‘how’ and the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there’. I felt lucky that Lee was short and perfectly formed, starting with an elegant straight-backed ‘L’ and then those lovely identical ee’s that were so hard to get right. At bedtime, Dad would read to my brother and me—Horton the Elephant was a popular choice—or tell us stories he made up himself. One of Dad’s recurring protagonists was the brilliant and intrepid inventor, Professor Morgan—naturally, Dad’s name is Morgan—who created machines out of junk
