Itzel: A wideranging two volume novel
Volume II In the movement's aftermath ― NOW OUT
An older woman who spent her eighteenth year in Auschwitz. A younger one who used her nineteenth to organize against the war in Vietnam in New York. An economics student who despite his radical convictions works for the Mexican stock exchange. Mexico 1968. A year, a student movement, a friendship and a massacre which changes all of their lives forever. This is the stuff of Itzel, a two volume novel from Sarah Xerar Murphy, the woman who lived it.
This second volume focuses on Nauta, the narrator, to bring her face to face with her own violence and capacity for both betrayal and commitment in a series of harrowing scenes.
Friendship, Mobilization, Repression, Heroism
WINNER OF THE NEW BRUNSWICK BOOK AWARDS MRS DUNSTER'S FICTION PRIZE
In this first volume, it is Itzel who is the focus, as she blooms into her own agency, bravery, even heroism, possibilities she thought beaten out of her by the horror of the camps.
Such tenderness and intelligence are rarely found within the same covers.
― Todd Gitlin, author of Occupy
Two experimental visual/word/Voice works
Illustrated monologues of a Brooklyn childhood
Montage, Illustration, Performance Documentation
Montage, Illustration, Performance Documentation
This writing talks. It pushes into a reader's heart with the immediacy of its telling ― Daphne Marlatt
Montage, Illustration, Performance Documentation
Montage, Illustration, Performance Documentation
Montage, Illustration, Performance Documentation
Riveting, concise narratives… As bold, lyrical and thought out as a performance piece… [with] the intimate feel of a diary ― Deborah Staab
Three novels & three collections
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
An erotic power reminiscent of Marguerite Duras ― Janette Turner Hospital
A novel of abuse and healing
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
A deep and exquisitely written story of transformation ― Margot Adler
A novel of solidarity's discontents
A novel of friendship & psychic fragmentation
A novel of solidarity's discontents
...feminist and anti-racist in value, sardonic in wit, always surprising in what it relates ― Daphne Marlatt
Stories, Memoir, Personal Essays
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
A novel of solidarity's discontents
...vital, dynamic, engaged... that gravelly voice overflowing with earthy wisdom, deft humour and incantatory power can be heard throughout ― Elspeth Cameron
Adventures in the Long Short
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
...luminescent prose as comic book strips and bedtime stories and a journey or two to hell become the stuff of her contemporary fictions ― Robert Kroetsch
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
Two Novellas and 7 footnotes in search of their text
...shifting labyrinths created by the mind, the soul, and multiple languages: ― George Melnyk
Other Writing
Widely published in magazines and anthologies, Xerar Murphy's innovative fiction and nonfiction, include "You would make a good Jesuit", a finalist for the CBC Creative Nonfiction contest seen here in a screenshot along with a drawing from her installation, scrapbook, exhibited in The UK and Canada.