Press release:
We are thrilled to report that Kiwi writer, Lee Murray, has been appointed by King Charles III as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in recognition of her services to literature, particularly speculative literature, in the 2025 New Year Honours announcements.
Equivalent to royal honours awarded in other commonwealth nations, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, the New Zealand awards were instituted in 1996 by royal warrant for “those persons who in any field of endeavour, have rendered meritorious service to the Crown and nation or who have become distinguished by their eminence, talents, contributions, or other merits.” She is the only one to be honoured for literature this year, and it is rare for anyone to be honoured specifically in speculative fiction. The appointment follows Murray’s 2024 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction, for which she became the first person of Asian descent to receive the accolade.
“I hope this acknowledgement of my work will raise awareness of the important contributions our speculative creatives – including thought leaders, visionaries, and poets – bring to contemporary society,” Murray said. “Not only is it well established that literature develops critical thought, resilience, and empathy, speculative literature, which includes indigenous narratives, myth, and magical realism, allows us to consider important issues in ways which can result in deeper understanding and sometimes offer real change.”
Murray’s outstanding service to the literary community includes the support and development of writers and writing programmes through organisations such as the Horror Writers Association (HWA), Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA), the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA), and Tauranga Writers, among others. She co-founded and co-facilitated Young New Zealand Writers, a not-for-profit providing development and publishing opportunities for New Zealand school students from 2012-2022 and was co-founder and convenor of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Writers 2019-2020.
While words are her stock in trade, Murray said, “it is difficult to describe how humbling and uplifting it is to receive a royal honour, and especially for speculative fiction genres of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, which are widely viewed as the ugly stepsisters of literature despite their enormous popularity.”
A five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner and her country’s only recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award for psychological horror, she has also been honoured by the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Society and NZ Society of Authors. Murray has written and curated nearly forty titles since 2007. Her latest work, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, draws on her Asian-Kiwi heritage, and examines the lives of Chinese women in New Zealand through the lens of the shapeshifting fox spirit of Asian myth. She is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press), a groundbreaking volume which attempts to eliminate harmful stigmatising portrayals of mental illness in horror. A Life Member of SpecFicNZ, Murray is part of a committee working to establish a juried award for speculative fiction for New Zealand and Pacific Island nations from 2026.
Murray will be presented with her ONZM insignia at an investiture to be held at New Zealand’s Government House later in the year.
New Zealand Order of Merit:
Official listing for Lee Murray:
Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud: https://thecubapress.nz/shop/fox-spirit-on-a-distant-cloud/