Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Shirley Rousseau Murphy was an American author, born in Oakland, California, in 1928, who trained at the California School of Fine Arts and worked early on as a packaging designer, interior decorator, and mosaic instructor before turning to writing full time. She published fantasy and children's fiction, including the Dragonbards trilogy and The Catswold Portal, but became best known for the Joe Grey series, following an intelligent, crime-solving cat in the fictional town of Molena Point across more than a dozen novels beginning with Cat on the Edge (1996). Her work received the Cat Writers' Association's Muse Medallion seven times between 1997 and 2005, along with multiple Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists awards and a 1987 Parents' Choice Award. She died in 2022.