Julie Murphy

Julie Murphy:
The books that have resonated with me the most are books where your body is incidental, but it's still something that you can never leave behind.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Like so many great writers, Julie Murphy's work comes from a place of raw honesty. She's become widely renowned for writing about themes of body positivity, self-acceptance, and LGBTQ+ representation, and she continues to push those themes in new ways, even when it feels like the progress is being undone.

Julie Murphy:
We don't lose those conversations we had, even if we're taking three steps backwards, we still took five steps forward.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Julie's best known in kidlit and young adult circles for her book Dumplin, which was adapted into a Netflix movie and its subsequent series, the Faith Herbert Origin Story series and her 2014 debut novel, Side Effects May Vary. In this episode, she tells us about the double-edged sword of her self-deprecating humor and how she feels about the response she gets, not just from her young readers, but their parents, especially their moms, and she also discusses the evolution of body politics. She shares the college class that bored her into oblivion, leading her to discover the Twilight series and sparking the chain reaction that landed Julie in the literary world.

My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is the Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and illustrators about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations, and why their stories and ideas motivate kids to read more. Make sure to check us out on Instagram for giveaways, at the Reading Culture Pod. We have a very exciting one coming up soon, and you can also subscribe to our newsletter at TheReadingCulturePod.com/newsletter. All right, onto the show.

So let's start with your childhood. You were born in Connecticut?

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, so I was born in Bridgeport Connecticut, which I feel like when people think of Connecticut, they think of the Gilmore girls, and I was not born in that version of Connecticut. I was born in a version of Connecticut where my parents' car was stolen four times before I turned five years old, so we were always rental house people. My dad was in and out of prison early on in life, and not until I was older did I understand that it wasn't like a business trip. It was actually like he's gone for a reason.

So once he served his time and could leave the state legally, essentially my parents wanted to change and they moved to Texas. And that was a really shocking thing for especially my mom's side of the family because no one had really ever left. They were mostly in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. No one had ever really left. My parents wanted a change and they also had gotten really bit by the Jesus bug, and there was a church that they loved in Connecticut that was like, we're going to go plant a church in Texas because Texas just needs more churches for some reason. I don't know.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Obviously.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, so bizarre. But we ended up in San Antonio for a few years, for five or six years, and then we moved to North Texas and we have just hopped round all the different Dallas suburbs throughout most of my adolescence.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow, that's such culture shock. Do you have memories of that experience?

Julie Murphy:
I remember expecting there to be no buildings anywhere when we got off the plane, I thought we would just land in a dirt field. And there were buildings and the people that we were greeted by at the airport were some of my parents' friends, and they immediately took us to go get Mexican food. Not only was it Mexican food, but it was Tex-Mack. So I was really excited about the amount of cheese that was included. I do remember when we were, I don't know if it was when we were driving to our rental house or in the first week or so, I did see someone just riding a horse on their way to the grocery store out in the suburbs, and I was like, oh-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
We're not in Bridgeport anymore.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. I was like, this is a new thing for me. In Connecticut too I was always one of the few White kids in my neighborhood, but in Texas, especially at my school, I was the only White kid at my school. And I moved to Texas soon after Selena died, and when Selena died, they called us all into the cafeteria and broke the news to the whole school at once and then announced that people's parents were coming to pick them up and I had no idea who Selena was, and my mom came and picks me up and she was like, "A girl from your school died? What's going on?" We got home and saw the news and realized that it was a colossal event in Mexican culture. So yeah, that was real interesting the first few years there.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And did your parents, I think that's also interesting, they didn't mind living in a predominantly not White area that was there, or was it just that joint choice they had or?

Julie Murphy:
No, not necessarily the only choice. I don't know what it was about my parents. I've thought a lot about my parents over my adult life, obviously like every other person, but we were constantly finding ourselves in primarily Mexican churches, primarily Black churches. I don't know, my mom was just always really at home in spaces like that, and whether or not were... We were always warmly welcomed in places like that, but I've never been able to put the pieces together about why that was. And maybe it was because she grew up in Bridgeport and they were the only White family on a street of Puerto Rican families, maybe that could play into it. But yeah, I grew up in some pretty interesting churches where you normally wouldn't find a little white girl from Connecticut.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Are you religious now? Has that-

Julie Murphy:
No.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
... No. It sounds like you were going to church every week and that was a really important, or more big part of your life.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. So my parents were, especially my mom was charismatic Christian. We were going to church Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings, Sunday nights. Sometimes there were, especially in the South, week-long revivals and things like that going on. My sister definitely stuck more with it than I did, but I think that very early on I realized I wanted to kiss girls and whether or not I knew how to reconcile that, I knew that it left me feeling like I was on the outskirts for some reason. And it took me a long time to realize I didn't feel bad about that feeling of wanting to feeling like I was bisexual or something like that. But I did feel bad about being left out of a community that I had grown up with and that made me start to wonder maybe I didn't grow up with the right community for me.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I think that's, especially if you were sort of in middle school, I think some people look and think there's something wrong with me because this is what the community thinks I should be. And I wonder what that was about you, I

 guess, that helped you, who was in your life or something that helped you understand that nothing's wrong with you?

Julie Murphy:
I think I definitely had those, something's wrong with me feelings, but maybe a year or two after high school is when it really set in and I felt like something else has to be true. This can't be the only true thing in the world. And I think a lot of it has to do with, I went to private Christian schools growing up, and when I say private Christian schools, it's harkening back to what I said about Connecticut. I'm not talking about fancy private schools. I'm talking about a bunch of people who are cobbling their pennies together so that their kids don't have to go to the demonic public schools. Those were the kind of private Christian schools I went to. What really was my saving grace was that I got involved in community theater outside of school, and there were so many people who I connected with there who would not be welcome in the circles that I was in at school and at church, and I connected with them on such a stronger level than I had with just about any other people I'd met in my life.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And when you were little, you wrote Chubby Bunny, which I hadn't read, and I just read, which I loved. I also loved playing Chubby Bunny as a kid, I feel like, I don't know, sometimes I'll introduce that to kids and they're like, I had never heard of it, but that's my little girl who's teased and stuff at school. Were you teased and everything when you were younger for being fat? Was that like a-

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, definitely. And also, not only was I fat, but I remember in third grade I had my first male teacher and he was a rather small guy, but he was big and bulky and he was also a soccer coach at the school. And at third grade, halfway through the year, I surpassed him in height. And I just remember being so incredibly mortified and so embarrassed by my height, because it just felt like there's something to be said for being a little shorter and being chubby and feeling like you can still hide, you can still sneak into spaces, but when you're that tall and also when you're as obnoxious as I was as a kid, and I say that with love, it's just really hard to hide from people. And it was one of those things where it's like I was constantly telling myself that if I made the joke about myself first, then it couldn't hurt. And so I was constantly using self-deprecating humor to try to cope with that, but definitely teased as a child.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that self-deprecating humor is such a-

Julie Murphy:
Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
... that's a beast.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, something to sort through for sure.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Switching gears a little, were you into reading? I've read that you were not, that you were not much of a reader, your household, it sounds like you were probably a lot of other priorities growing up besides that.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, so we were very much a paycheck to paycheck household. There were times, of course, that I found myself really falling into books and really obsessing over books, but I think a lot of writers, you'll find that they're like, oh my gosh, I wrote my first story when I was five years old. No one could stop me from writing. You could not pay me to write anything when I was younger. It was immediately homework immediately now. But I do remember there are really fond memories of specific types of books for me, or I remember the first time I went to the library in Texas, I had no friends.

It was the first time I went to a library and had fully conceptualized the idea that there was technically no limit on how many books you could check out. And I got up to the front of the counter and there was just a toppling stack of books, and this poor librarian was just painstakingly going through and stamping each card for me. And finally I looked at her and I was like, do you have a shopping bag for that? I was just, could I get a bag for that? And she looked at me like I was just unhinged, and that poor woman probably went to the break room and took her lunch out of a plastic bag and gave it to me. I don't know.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, but she gave you one. Librarians are the best.

Julie Murphy:
She did.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.

Julie Murphy:
They are the best. They're the best. But yeah, I think it went from picture books to chapter books to Sweet Valley High to all of a sudden obsessed with the occult, like Clan of the Cave Bear, which was a-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh my God, Clan of the Cave Bear.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow. I have not thought about that book. Yeah, that-

Julie Murphy:
You probably don't want to.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
No. Okay.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, that was definitely one I had to hide from my parents.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Julie Murphy:
But there was this weird obsession with The Occult and end times Christian fiction too, and lots of just Christian fiction that bordered on scary. I remember reading a lot of that. There's the Left Behind series-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The Left Behind series. Yeah, that was-

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Of course. I read those for a while.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Get books and everything from the library. Do you remember some of the books that you were drawn to really, or was it not really until later that you-

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Sweet Valley High was really a big deal for me, and they were also books that I sometimes had to hide from my mom, because they sometimes looked a little bit sexy. I also was hiding Flowers in the Attic from my mom and Petals on the Wind, all those books.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Gosh.

Julie Murphy:
I've been going through books lately and just cracking those open and man, just the things that we read, it was so great. So that was a big deal. But then going back younger, Jillian Jiggs, Amelia Bedelia, just any kind of clumsy or messy female character was something I felt like I could relate to.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Let's talk a little bit about Twilight. When did you read the Twilight books?

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Okay. So I went to community college for years and years. My husband and I actually met in community college in a creative writing class taught by a romance author.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh.

Julie Murphy:
I know. I didn't think of myself as a writer at that point. I wanted to work in politics. I wanted to either become a lawyer or become a political advisor for campaigns or something like that. I liked the idea of doing a little bit of dirty work behind the scenes. I don't know what that says about me.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wanted to be like Scandal, what's her name?

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Olivia Pope, Kleenex-

Julie Murphy:
Be a little bit of a fixer. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.

Julie Murphy:
To be fair, among my friend groups, I am the friend you call when you're stranded somewhere and need a hotel or stranded somewhere and you'd have no signal to get an Uber. I'm that person, so I feel like I could have done it, but it was my last semester of college, I was taking all legal classes and all government related classes. I was in this class that was just devastatingly boring called the Fall of the Russian Empire. It was taught by one of my favorite professors, but he was also the kind of professor that wrote his own textbooks and then taught from them, and they were not widely published textbooks.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Are you sure this is the best one to be learning from? Okay.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, probably it was a little out-of-date. And I started reading Twilight in the back of his classroom one day and I could not stop, and I just kept reading it, and it was the first, reading had definitely started to creep into my life over the last few years, but it was the first time that I read a book that felt like something I could replicate or something I could do. That's not necessarily like me putting down Stephanie Meyer her work or anything like that, but it was just the first time that writing felt relatable.

And also it was the first time that an author was part of the story. Part of the reason I heard about the book was because I heard about this woman who had a dream about a sparkly vampire and then decided to write a book, and every other author I'd ever read a book by felt so distant, even the Harry Potter books, those felt so distant and impossible to me. But this was just like a mom, a Mormon mom who wrote a book about a sparkly vampire and an entire generation was suddenly obsessed with it. And so it was the first book that gave me the idea that maybe I could do this too, maybe I could try this.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that is true about her. Yeah, because it was like, oh, she's just not a writer. But then she was a writer. I mean, she is, but it felt like this person who just like, I'm going to do this.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh my God. Yeah, I've read that you say, no shame in what you read or whatever, but I was young, like 27 or something, and my sister, who's younger than me, was like, you need to read these books. I'm like, oh, I don't read YA. I don't even know what that is, and I'm not reading that. It's a vampire book. No, thank you. She's like, I really think you're going to like it. And I just remember at the time, I was traveling for my job back and forth to California all the time, and I would just not move from my seat from, I just finished the whole series in a very short period of time.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. I finished all of them very quickly and I immediately reread all of them. My boyfriend who was then later my husband was like, I literally can't even have a conversation with you right now. What are you even doing? And I was like, maybe if you read these books, you could be a better person-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Little bit more.

Julie Murphy:
... and we would have something to talk about.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, I know. You're like maybe if you were a little more understanding and patient, let me tell you all the things. Let me tell you about these things.

Julie Murphy:
It's not my fault. You're illiterate.


Julie Murphy:
Every plane, no matter how far it is up there, I send love to it. I picture the people in their seats with their plastic cups of soda or orange juice or scotch, and I love them. I really love them. I send a steady, visible stream of it love from me to them, from my chest to their chests, from my brain, to their brains. It's a game I play. It's a good game because I can't lose. I do it everywhere now. When I buy roll-aids at the drugstore, I love the lady who runs the place. I love the old man who's stocking the shelves. I love even the cashier with the insanely large hands who treats me like shit every other day. I don't care if they love me back. This isn't reciprocal, it's an outpouring, because if I give it all away, then no one can control it because if I give it all away, I'll be free.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That passage is not from Twilight, although it's notable that Julie did consider reading from that series.

Julie Murphy:
I actually reread a chunk of Twilight last night and couldn't even decide on what passage I could possibly read because there were so many gems and all of them, I would probably laugh my way through for good reasons, just because it's so nostalgic and fun.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
It's a bestseller for a reason. This passage is actually from Ask the Passengers by A.S King. Have you ever found yourself on a summer day laying on the grass, staring up at the sky, watching the planes pass and wondering who's in there? Where are they going? What are they thinking? The people up there feel so far off, so removed from you, from your life. They're people, but the confrontation is removed, and so they're safer people, safer for you to be yourself around because really they aren't around. In A.S King's Ask the Passengers, teenager Astrid Jones seeks the comfort of the strangers in the air via her ability to send her thoughts and communicate with them. Throughout the story, Astrid connects with the passengers and through those connections, she explores her own identity and grapples with her feelings of sexuality and of being an outsider. By becoming comfortable with herself among the soon familiar strangers, she discovers her own confidence in the world on the ground. This book helped Julie do the same, although Julie, as far as I know, isn't telepathic.

Julie Murphy:
A.S King is one of those authors that I discovered when I was first starting to write that I was just so incredibly moved by. Amy releases a book or for a while was releasing a book every fall, and I would just wait in anticipation of that book, but Ask the Passengers' one of the first books that I really related to as a bisexual girl, bisexual woman, it was this book that I read that finally felt like you didn't have to put love into a box. Love didn't have to look a certain way or have a certain name. It reminded me so much of that self-deprecating humor I had as a kid. If you give all your love away and you give it away without trying to measure it or without expecting anything back then that love can't hurt you. It can't come back to bite you. So it's just stuck with me for a long time.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. And I feel like also around that time that you're reading that also discover this other kind of love, which is more dangerous of you're giving your heart to somebody and that really could hurt you.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. I think that the great contrast between books like this and then books Twilight is books like Twilight are the fantasy of love, the thirteen-year-old and me, that's the kind of love that I had imagined existed as I grew older and I could look back on my teenage years. This was the reality of love. This was the love that I knew. Yeah, A.S King, those books really literally stick to my bones.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Soon after, Julie fell in love with the idea of writing her own stories, but she faced another setback that would delay her journey. Your family, the house that they had, I'm guessing they were so proud of was foreclosed on?

Julie Murphy:
Yes. So before the time I graduated high school, we'd lived in 20 different houses and I lived in fear of sheriffs because I knew that if you saw a sheriff, they were probably coming to your door. So yeah, my family had bought that house, I don't know, probably my first year of high school or so, and we lived there for three and a half, four years before we lost it. And it was too much house for us. It was an ambitious house for us. I can say that now as an adult, but it was also so much my parents dreamed to live in that specific house. And yeah, 9/11 happened, my dad was in the car business. He has a felony record. There's not a lot of other options for him.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, it was a felony that he was in jail for. That makes your life very...

Julie Murphy:
So things were tough in the car business at that point.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Right. After her family refound their footing, Julie returned to her education, first starting in community college and then transferring to Texas Wesleyan University, that led her to deciding she was ready to write her first book, which she had no doubt in her mind was going to be a bestseller.

Julie Murphy:
So I graduated college in December 2011, maybe 2000. I don't know. I am awful with dates. The numbers I know are my social security number, and that's about it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That's all you need.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. But I graduated in December and then I dabbled with writing. I started working in libraries, because I figured I'm not going to go and spend a ton of money on a law degree that I might not use just yet, and I've got some time. So I started working in libraries and by May of the following year, I had sat down to write my first book, and I wrote my first book in three weeks and I thought it was a masterpiece. And without rereading it, I sent it to 100 agents and got 100 rejections. So, rightfully so.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That was not, Side Effects May Vary, I'm guessing.

Julie Murphy:
No, no, it wasn't. But I really do miss having that kind of blind confidence, I'll be honest.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I don't need to reread this.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This is good.

Julie Murphy:
But I was a really fast learner, and so I immediately was mortified and picked up on all the mistakes that I had made and all the steps that I had bypassed. November of that same year, I was starting to get an idea for a book. It was National Novel Writing Month coming up, and I was doing programming for my library for National Novel writing month. And the kids were pissed because it was taking place on the same night that was normally anime night. And so they were there to see anime and not write a book, and they were like, well, we're not writing a book unless you write a book. And I was like, well, damn it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay.

Julie Murphy:
Okay. Let's do it. And I started writing Side Effects May Vary, and I wrote most of the first draft that month of November, and then the following spring I signed with an agent and just about a year from the time that I had started querying that first awful book with a hundred rejections, I sold my first book. I feel like I had done a lot of brain work on writing for years and years, and I had circled the idea of writing for a long time, and then when I finally sat down to actually do it, that part actually went pretty quickly. But I do think there's something about me that I won't act on something until I feel certain about it. And once if I do make a mistake and if I do make a misstep, I'll only try to do something again if I know for certain that I've learned from my mistakes and can successfully execute something. All that being said, writing is so much a game of luck. It's such a game of roulette. So who's to say what of that is even true?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Through her work, Julie has explored a lot of very personal topics, notably her own journey with body image. By drawing deeply from her own experiences and relationships, Julie brings a raw authenticity to her characters, and because of that, her stories have resonated with countless readers. I was curious how that openness has impacted the real life relationships she draws from.

Julie Murphy:
I think especially with my mom, just my mom is willing to tuck a shirt into her pants now. She used to be so, oh my gosh, no one can see this part of my body that is barely a curve, but no one can see it. She's willing to wear swimsuits without shorts now. So much has changed about her that is, I would find it shocking as a teenager or as a young person. So a lot has changed. But also, I say this with love mom, and I would say this to her face, there's still a lot of bogus health things that she buys into that aren't necessarily backed by what we call science.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I think it's also interesting that you grew up in these Black and Mexican communities because definitely as I grew up in a very White place, but as I grew up and was in a lot of different spaces, the body, the appreciation of larger bodies is really different in those communities. So I think it's also an interesting thing that you grew up around people that presumably had just more acceptance. I remember I studied abroad in Venezuela and the mom

 there was like, oh, you're a little [foreign language 00:26:23], whatever, pinching at my rolls, and I was taken aback, but that was just calling it what it is.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. And specifically the Black churches I grew up in were primarily Nigerian, and I think that there was something incredibly terrifying about walking into those spaces at times because they are just so incredibly frank about bodies.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes.

Julie Murphy:
It was like ripping off a band-aid every week sometimes. But it was also, I think it put me a step ahead. It helped me feel a little bit more comfortable, at least to acknowledge my body, because I had a lot of fat friends who would just, it was easier for them to pretend that they weren't fat, just not even acknowledge it, but it was undeniable in the circles I was in.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And is your thought now, you've put so much into the canon of these characters that are so multi-dimensional and almost all times are plus-sized, and then there's also this movement, like you said in the public sphere about body positivity or fat positivity and all this. What do you think is the state of our body politic as it were now?

Julie Murphy:
We're in a weird place right now. The buzzword now is Ozempic and all these different things. I don't think you could ever blame a fat person for trying not to be fat. We don't make it easy. This is not a world that we build for people of different shapes and sizes. There were a few years there where it was just unrelenting fat positivity and body positivity. At least that's what it felt like from inside this movement. And now no matter what movement you're in, there will always be a period where there is a response. And so now I think we're sitting and living through a response to body positivity and fat positivity. And I think that I talk to a lot of people who are younger than me and witnessing this, and they're very discouraged. And I think what's important to remember is that those big conversations we had when people like Lizzo and all these people were taking center stage that had bigger bodies just because we're in this moment where we're talking about losing weight and that's taking more of a center stage.
We don't lose those conversations we had, even if we're taking three steps backwards, we still took five steps forward. I just really don't want younger people who are still, I hate to say, struggling with their bodies. That's one of my least favorite phases. But young people who are still trying to carve out how they feel about their bodies, I don't want them to feel discouraged, but I also don't want to vilify fat people who are out here just trying to make an easier life for themselves in some kind of way. For every big conversation we have, the first few years of that conversation will always feel like sound bites and headlines, and now I think we're entering into more of a nuanced part of this conversation that's going to require a lot more deep thinking and a lot more thoughts. So we'll see what happens. But I'm still here, I'm still fat.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. And you really have done, like I said at the beginning of this conversation, I think I just would've given anything to have these books for myself growing up if I had read Dear Sweet Pea. It's hard to imagine because just so often the books, they're not about a character's body per se, it's just a thought, these little passing thoughts that if you're living in a bigger body you'll have.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
A little whatever it might be, I have to climb this fence, I have to do this thing, whatever. It's like...

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Yeah, I think the books that are about the thing, about bodies or whatever are just as important, but I've found that the books that have resonated with me the most are books where your body is incidental, but it's still something that you can never leave behind.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I love that. I love how you said that. Okay. Let's talk for a minute now about how it feels to see all these reactions to your work. And I'm thinking about how you said that you were always eagerly awaiting the new A.S King book, and I wonder what it's like for you now thinking about people eagerly awaiting the next Julie Murphy release. They've been so impacted that they're waiting for that. What does that feel like?

Julie Murphy:
I am very late to process everything that ever happens in my life. It still feels very foreign and a mistake to me that someone could be like, oh, I'll buy every Julie Murphy book that comes out. I don't know. When someone meets me and is nervous or it's a little teary-eyed, I'm just like, I'm the same person that has to literally scoop poop out of a cat litter box every morning. I'm not that impressive or special. I wish I had some special and substantive thing to say about that, but it feels so incredibly impossible to me that someone could think that. But at the same time, what's been really special to me is I am such an introvert, and I, especially as I've gotten older, I think that a lot of the extrovertism that I performed as a child was just me trying to compensate for my body.
So as I've leaned into who I really feel that I am, as I've gotten older, I've discovered what an introvert I am, and I don't share a lot with a lot of people. And so, one really simple way to know me is to read my books. It's been so shocking to me how incredibly validating it is to write something in a book and hear that someone on the other side of the country, the other side of the world, has found themselves in that because it's in a way means that they've found me and that I'm a little less alone in the world. And that's probably a really selfish way of thinking of it, but it's really comforting as someone who grew up thinking that no one could ever possibly feel the way that I feel. It's really nice.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, I can imagine, especially when you're, I'm just looking right behind your head as a Ramona Blue. There's certain things that I think of these stories that feel very vulnerable to think of people reading them and having that kind of connection. It's like they're connecting to you.

Julie Murphy:
That's how I feel about Ramona Blue. It's by far my worst selling book of all time really. But it's the one that I feel the most connected to internally at least.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that book I cry. I was emotional reading that book. Yeah.

Julie Murphy:
Well, I was emotional writing it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
When you go on school visits or whatever, especially as an introvert, I always think that's so interesting because authors are expected to have this profile, this footprint or whatever that's sharing things about your life, but then many authors are introverts. I was wondering if you've had certain moments that really stand out for you with any of your book

 tours or anything meeting with kids or?

Julie Murphy:
I think the times that have just been so incredibly adorable to me are the times when I've met little girls who have come to school dressed as like Sweet Pea from Dear Sweet Pea and her little striped shirt, a little fake orange cat. It's just so incredibly endearing, and a lot of those kids too have seen Dumplin, the movie, even if they're not quite ready to read it. I don't know the fact that bodies are already something that's on their mind and something that they're thinking about is difficult. But at the same time, I never had a sounding board Dumplin. If I was thinking about my body at that age, it was never for a positive reason. It was never for a reason that would allow me to relate to anyone else or feel seen in any kind of way. Going back to my mom and the evolution that she and I have had to go through over the years, the times that really stand out to me are the times when I've actually gotten to meet people's parents.
One time this woman emailed me and said that she saw her daughter reading my book, and she decided to go ahead and pick it up, and she was just really taken aback and shocked by how much of herself she saw in that book that made her uncomfortable because she didn't see herself as the main character. She saw herself as the mom, and she was devastated to discover that. I don't know when that shift happens when we go from being that vulnerable teenage girl to being the mom. That's reinforcing all the awful things that we've learned. But even I don't have children, and I find myself being that person in some type of way sometimes, whether it's talking to my nieces about the dress code at their school and being like, well, I guess you shouldn't, or I'll have to check myself sometimes to ask myself, am I relating to the teenager who went through those things or am I just being another adult in their life who's reinforcing negative thinking or something.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I wanted to also ask you about now, so you're here, you've written now picture books, I've read you want to write early chapter books?

Julie Murphy:
Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Because it's like now you've done this full gamut.

Julie Murphy:
I like to tell the marketing team at HarperCollins that you can read Julie Murphy from Cradle to Grave. But yeah, actually we just announced this last week or the week before, but I am releasing my first chapter book series called Catty Corner about a girl that's half cat, half girl, and her going to school for the very first time and having to live through the very difficult cat-like distractions that a cat might be distracted by at school, learning not to lead a step with a clause forward at all times. Learning how to use her-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I like that.

Julie Murphy:
... cattiness for good.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
When is that coming out?

Julie Murphy:
The first two books will be out next February. So February 2025.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. And that's the only real age group I guess, that you hadn't quite covered, huh?

Julie Murphy:
I think so.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That might be it.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Maybe I'll get a board book in there somewhere.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, the true cradle to the grave. And you have another book coming out a bit sooner, right?

Julie Murphy:
I do have the second Camp Sylvania book coming out in May that I got to co-author with Crystal Maldonado. There's a new point of view in the second book.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Do I know who it's going to be? Are you going to talk-

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. So it's Maggie and her best friend, Nora. Nora narrates half the book this time.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, fun.

Julie Murphy:
And then the first book, Nora ends up in a quite scary situation, so she gets to have her own summer adventure.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Aha. Okay. Excellent. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You were living out your, I don't know, I don't want to, can't spoil it, but you were living out some of your Twilight dreams.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah, some of my Twilight dreams. Some of my heavyweights was a really iconic movie for me growing up.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes. Oh my God.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. So I don't look too closely at Camp Sylvania. I might've really been inspired by Heavyweights.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Julie's own love story is Swoon movie worthy because she met her husband in a creative writing course taught by a romance author naturally for her reading challenge, Love Hurts. She wants us to read love stories that also, well, that also hurt.

Julie Murphy:
I love a sad love story, and I love books for all ages. So my list is called Love Hurts, and it covers everything from middle grade to adult. It's got a little bit of it all, and it includes some of my favorite books and some books that really changed my life, and just some books that I thought were so funny and lighthearted going into it. And I just wanted to kick the author, because they had me crying at the end, like Ms. Bixby's Last Day is a middle grade, and that's one that always comes to mind as a book that I had so much fun, and then you made me cry. How dare you. So yeah, it's a decent sized list, but one of my favorite books of all time, and this is another one that I couldn't find just one passage from, is called God Shaped Hole.
It's a book from the early 2000s. It's an adult book. It starts out with this little girl going to a fortune-teller, and she tells her that her one true love will be epic, but her one true love will die. At the time the girl is such a huge fan of Duran Duran, and so she thinks that she's certain Duran Duran is going to die, and she wakes up the next morning and they're still alive. And so she forgets this blip of a thing that happened with the fortune-teller, and then the book opens with her reading a Looking for Love ad in a newspaper, and it starts out with a guy having written that he's looking for a friend for the end of the world, and it's just like the ups and downs of a truly great love story. I put, Please Ignore Vera Dietz on here. It's one of my favorites.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Perfect.

Julie Murphy:
If You Could Be Mine by Sarah Farazan is another favorite of mine. And what's really unfair is that Sarah is so incredibly funny in real life, and I met Sarah before I read that book, and I read that book and was-

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You didn't expect it.

Julie Murphy:
... just completely, my soul had just turned into a ground up hot dog by the end, and I was pissed at her. That's

 a really fun list. There's some really fun books on there, and I think I probably enjoy sad books more than I enjoy happy books.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing.

Julie Murphy:
Yeah. Thank you for asking.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This episode has been the Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Julie Murphy. I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. Currently, I'm engrossed in "Grown Woman Talk" by Sharon Malone and revisiting "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five-star review. It just takes a second and really helps. To learn more about how you can contribute to growing your community's reading culture, explore all our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport and Lower Street Media, with script editing by Josiah Lamberto Egan. Thanks for joining us, and keep reading!