Photos by Laurel Golio

Calling someone a gay writer (or queer, lesbian or trans) can still have dire repercussions. The writer is often pigeonholed, and their work risks being relegated to special shelves in bookstores or lost in some algorithmic niche on Amazon. And so writer Tim Murphy chooses carefully whether and how to engage with the label when discussing his new novel, Correspondents.

I will say I dont think this book is very gay, compared to the last one, Murphy offers cautiously, lounging on his couch in his light-filled apartment in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Though Correspondents isnt very gay, its precision, depth and empathy are all from someone who has created a powerful voice in many respects because of his sexuality. Murphy has worked for nearly 20 years as a journalist, focusing mostly on HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ issues for publications including The New York Times, The Nation and POZ magazine. He is also an energetic activist, including being a member of the New York City-based activist groups Gays Against Guns and Rise and Resist. Both on social media and IRL, friends know him as a community builder and tirelessly supportive political voice. Hes not just a gay writer. Hes a super gay writer.

All that time in the trenches led him to write Christadora, his previous gayer novel that deals with the devastating effects of AIDS on a large group of characters in New York. Moving back and forth through time, from the 80s until the near future, Murphy portrays several characters affected by a disease that transforms their lives, their city, even reality itself. It was a huge accomplishment, up there with another AIDS novel, Rebecca Makkais The Great Believers, and deserving of more attention.

Correspondents also confidently flips through time, and Murphy once again draws upon his expertise as a journalist and an exhaustive researcher to create another emotionally resonant, time-hopping page turner. The sweeping novel mostly takes place in the post-9/11 2000s and centers on Rita Khoury, an ambitious Lebanese American reporter covering the Iraq War, and her translator, Nabil, a young Iraqi just coming to terms with his sexuality. Tapping into his own ancestry (Murphy, like Rita, is also of Lebanese descent), Correspondents explores immigration, the effects of US intervention and the long arc of war. But the novel, driven by a gripping plot, is by no means dogmatic. The book has received glowing notices from early book buzz makers like Kirkus, Booklist, Shelf Awareness and Library Journal, as well as being an Amazon Best Book for May 2019.

A few weeks before its release, Murphy discussed the novels inspiration, as well as the research that went into it, including a look into his ancestry and the struggles of immigrants then and now.