Hello my name is Joyce Murphy and I am an Irish redhead and children’s author of books for children ranging from 1 years of age to 10 years of age. My books include the Girl with the Flaming Red Hair, The Bee and the Dandelion, My Baby Bear Brother, Kong and the Magic Jungle and Kong and the Hungry Crocodile. To know a little bit about me, please read on.
I loved to make up imaginary lands where
Queen Bears from lands full of honey grass and purple skies flew in red planes
and visited my house on a Sunday. Sometimes they would leave apples, chocolate
or small toys under the apple tree in my Nanny’s back garden. Starting at the
age of ten I wrote stories to escape into rich and colourful places that were
filled with all kinds of adventures. I
love writing stories and verse and that land of imagination and colour still
lives inside me and now I invite you to live in it too through experiencing my
stories and reading them aloud if you are an adult or to yourself if you are a
child starting to read and discovering books for the first time. Oh to be
discovering books for the very first time. How I envy you!
I love to travel and I have lived in many different
places in my life. I lived beside the wild Atlantic Ocean in Galway where the
waves would reach over the prom and splash the cars parked there. From the
Joyce Country, I would walk the wild Atlantic Way up mountains and through
small narrow roads lined with stone walls built long ago.
After that I lived in mystical, magical Tintagel in Cornwall, birthplace of the legendary King Arthur and full of Merlin’s magic. Climbing up to the big castle and looking out from the cliff in Tintagel on a wet windy day, my cough of three months disappeared, just like that. Some might say it was a coincidence but I say it was the magic of the waves and the blessing of nature that did it for me. Isn’t this after all the home of spell wielding druids, healers and bards.
Now I live again by the coast in the South East of
Ireland. My favourite things to do when I am not writing is paddle in the sea,
take long solitary walks along the cliffs and dance in the rain.