My guest today on Writers at Work is Christine Murphy, author of NOTES ON SURVIVING THE FIRE, a novel that's available now. Christine's debut novel, NOTES ON SURVIVING THE FIRE is well published by Knopf and enjoying enviable reviews. The Los Angeles Times wrote Murphy has certainly written a furious, fast paced, emotionally residential, memorable novel, and the New Yorker said the narrative is equally layered with a thriller's bone, a satire's glare and a comeuppance story's anarchic spirit. My review? How dare a first novel be so engaging, challenging and absorbing.

What do we know about Christine Murphy? She has a PhD in religious studies, spent a year as a resident in a Buddhist nunnery and lived, worked and traveled in more than 100 countries. That's not much to go on and I'm quite eager to learn more about her and how NOTES ON SURVIVING THE FIRE came to be.