Nora Murphy is a freelance writer who specializes in writing for community-based nonprofit organizations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. She is the author of several children’s history books and a coauthor of Twelve Branches, a collection of short stories that was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award (Coffee House Press, 2003). Her essays have appeared in numerous journals, including St. Paul Almanac and Minnesota History. She holds an MFA degree in writing from Hamline University and received a Blacklock Nature Sanctuary Writing Fellowship in 2006 from the Jerome Foundation. Murphy is a writer-in-residence with COMPAS Writers and Artists in the Schools serving Minnesota schools. She is currently working on a book about the cross-cultural impact of the European conquest of Native lands, with a focus on her Irish Potato Famine ancestors’ homestead in central Minnesota. A novice knitter, she lives in St. Paul with her family.
