Teresa Burns Murphy

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    Teresa Burns Murphy is the author of a novel, The Secret to Flying (TigerEye Publications, 2011). Her writing has been published in Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women (Paycock Press, 2012), Academic Exchange Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Inquiry, Grokking the Fullness, Pulse Literary Review, the Science Teacher, Southern Women's Review, THEMA, The Tower Journal, The Washington Post, and Westview. Read more about Teresa >
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Featured Publications

The Secret to Flying

The Secret to Flying

TigerEye Publications, 2011.

Told from the perspective of an adolescent girl named Donita Tosh, THE SECRET TO FLYING explores the intricacies of the mother-daughter bond. For Donita, growing up poor in a small Arkansas town during the 1980s is bad enough, but having a mother with a scandalous reputation makes her life practically unbearable.

Irreconcilable Differences

Irreconcilable Differences

Southern Women’s Review (2010). 

Excerpt: I smell trouble before we even get out of Independence County. Merry Dell must smell it, too, because she is sniffling and her eyes are watering the way they do when she peels onions. When her cell phone jangles “I’ll Be Doggone,” she picks it up off the dashboard of her truck….

Announcements

Poems Published in Sparks of Calliope

  • Posted on March 11, 2023
  Happy to have two poems in Sparks of Calliope! Read the poems here.  

2022 Mary Mackey Short Story Prize Honorable Mention

  • Posted on January 17, 2023
My short story--"Nodders"--received an honorable mention in the 2022 Mary Mackey Short Story Prize judged by Gary Turchin.…
An excerpt from THE SECRET TO FLYING
When I was a little girl, I thought of my mother as a beautiful bird with clipped wings. I wasn't beautiful like she was, but I was determined to learn how to fly. She used to take me for flying lessons on a stretch of sand that ran along the Little Red River. She'd lie back with her knees pulled toward her chest and arch her ankles. I'd position my bottom on the soles of her feet and prepare myself for flight. "Close your eyes, Donita," she'd say, her voice as soothing as river water rolling downstream. "And release everything that weighs you down."
Recent Announcements
  • Poems Published in Sparks of Calliope
  • 2022 Mary Mackey Short Story Prize Honorable Mention
  • Essay Published in Months to Years
  • Review of The Hive Published in Literary Mama
  • The Value of Encouragement by Bethany Wallace
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