Pat Murphy’s fiction has won multiple awards, including Nebula Awards novel for her novel, The Falling Woman, and her novelette, Rachel in Love, a World Fantasy Award for her novella Bones, and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for her short story collection Points of Departure. If you are interested in checking out Pat's recent work, take a look at “Motherhood” (https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/motherhood/) or “Cold Comfort” (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/murphy-doherty_05_18_reprint/ )
Up until recently, Pat wrote science fiction in her spare time. She made her living as a science writer at a variety of idiosyncratic institutions, including the Exploratorium (the granddaddy of hands-on science museums), Klutz Press (publisher of Juggling for the Complete Klutz), an ed tech startup called Mystery Science, and the Crucible, a school of fire arts where one of Pat’s job perks was permission to set off the fire cannon whenever she wanted. (Yes, of course the school had a fire cannon.) Pat’s books about science for children (and some of the toys created to go with those books) won awards from organizations ranging from the American Institute of Physics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to Good Housekeeping and Family Fun magazine.
But though it was fun shooting off the fire cannon at the Crucible and getting paid to build chain reaction contraptions for Klutz Press, Pat longed for more time to read and write science fiction, fantasy, and stories that live in the borderlands between genres, where life is interesting and the rules are slippery. Last December, she finally ditched the day job to focus on writing fiction. It’s great to be back!