Lee Murray made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit

Award-winning speculative fiction writer and poet Lee Murray has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2025's New Year's Honours List. Lee's success as a writer of speculative fiction and literary mentor was recognised with the 2023 Prime Minster's Award for Literary Achievement (Fiction). We're excited to see her career, and generous service to literature in Aotearoa honoured on this list.

Lee has written and curated nearly 40 titles since 2007, earning more than 25 national and international awards. Notably, she has received five international Bram Stoker Awards and is the only New Zealander to receive the Shirley Jackson Award for psychological horror. She is a Life Member of Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand, and of Tauranga Writers, where she convened the group’s professional development programme from 2018 to 2020. She co-founded and co-facilitated Young New Zealand Writers, a not-for-profit which provided development and publishing opportunities for Year 7 to 13 students from 2012 to 2022, convening two annual writing competitions and curating seven of the organisation’s 16 anthologies. She co-established the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction, which ran in 2019 and 2020 before the death of sponsor Chloe Wright. As a volunteer curator-editor, she has championed nine national anthologies to develop emerging writers. As a mentor, Mrs Murray has supported more than 100 writers, including for the international Horror Writers Association, holding several roles since 2016, including co-founding and co-chairing the Wellness Committee, which focuses on improving horror literature portrayals of mental health to reduce stigma and increase understanding.