Mark Murphy has been a doctor since 1988.

He has been a writer his entire life.

After spending his early childhood reading anything he could get his hands on and roaming the marshes and maritime forests of coastal Georgia--where he collected myriad seashells, arrowheads, and fossils and fancied himself a swashbuckler of the highest order--Mark entered the creative literary world by winning a local poetry contest in the fifth grade. Later that year, he wrote, directed, and starred in his own play about the signing of the Declaration of Independence and started his own self-published classroom newspaper.

It was the high-water mark for Murphy's elementary school literary career.

In high school, Mark continued to write. He served as the high school newspaper's editor and won a few awards for his editorials, critical reviews, short stories, and poetry. He also attempted several times to start a novel. Alas, those attempts went nowhere, rarely making it beyond the first chapter--or the next call from his girlfriend, who was far more interesting than anything he could write about.

When he enrolled at the University of Georgia as a journalism major, he seemed destined for a literary career.

But he loved science. And he missed science.

Mark changed majors to Zoology with plans of becoming a marine biologist, like Jacques Cousteau. He even spent the better part of a year doing marine biology research. A good bit of that time involved tossing about on the Atlantic in a converted shrimp trawler that had once been used as a drug-smuggling boat, a leaky vessel that stank of diesel and dead fish. It was this experience that made him realize he did not want to be the next Jacques Cousteau (or the first, for that matter). Instead, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and go to medical school.

After graduating from the University of Georgia as a First Honor Graduate, with a 4.0 GPA, Mark enrolled at the Medical College of Georgia. After receiving his M.D., he moved on to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to begin his Internal Medicine residency. Mark's training at UNC was filled with interesting experiences; he took care of a dying sitcom star, a fallen televangelist, several corrupt politicians, and a serial killer while in Chapel Hill. He began to realize that medicine afforded physicians with a unique perspective into peoples' lives --an observation that would serve him well later.

Continuing his training in Chapel Hill as a Fellow in gastroenterology, Mark wrote several book chapters and academic articles--but his creative writing muse had withered away to nothing.

In 1994, Mark returned to his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, to start the practice that would ultimately become the largest gastroenterology group in South Georgia.


The untimely death of Mark's friend, Lisa Erickson, led him to write a short story, "The Funeral," as a gift for her husband. This story was published in a collection of short stories in 2004. For the past 15 years, he has written a regular opinion column for his hometown newspaper, the Savannah Morning News, and in 2021 won the Georgia Press Association's Otis Brumby Award as the top Op-Ed columnist in Georgia.

In 2012, Mark decided to tackle writing a novel once more. The result was "The Shadow Man," his first novel. "The Curse of the Thrax," his second novel, was published in 2014.

Mark lives in Savannah