Sally-Ann Murray

Murray was born in 1961 in Durban, South Africa,[1] and attended the Durban Girls' High School.[2] She received her MA and PhD from the University of Natal.[3]

In 1992 Murray published her first anthology of poems entitled Shifting (Carrefour Press).[3] Her second anthology, Open Season was published in 2006.[4] Her first novel, Small Moving Parts, was published in 2009 by Kwela Books.[5]

Poetry by Murray has appeared in literary journals and anthologies including, Imagination in a Troubled Space. A South African Poetry Reader (2004)[6] and The New Century of South African Poetry (2002).[7]

Murray has worked as a lecturer in the English Department of Stellenbosch University[3] and University of KwaZulu-Natal.[8] In addition to South African literature, Murray's research interests include environment, ecology, and cultural studies.[8] She has contributed to academic journals including publishing in Critical Arts[9] and English in Africa.[10]

Murray has been the chair of the Poetry Africa schools' poetry programme and is an adjudicator of the Douglas Livingstone Creative Writing Competition.[2]

Murray's first poetry collection, Shifting, won the 1991 Sanlam Award and 1989 Arthur Nortje/Vita Award.[2]

In 2009, her novel Small Moving Parts won the M-Net Prize for English Fiction.[11] The novel also won the 2010 Herman Charles Bosman Prize[12] and the 2013 University of Kwazulu-Natal General Book Prize.[13] It was nominated as a Sunday Independent 'Book of the Year' in 2009,[14] shortlisted for a Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2010,[15] and shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing.[16]