Donald Morison Murray (September 16, 1924 – December 30, 2006)[1] was an American journalist and English professor.
A paratrooper during World War II, he attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating with a degree in English in 1948.
After working briefly for Time magazine and as a freelance writer in the 1950s, Murray joined the University of New Hampshire faculty in 1963.
In a column published just before his death, he wrote, "Each time I sit down to write I don't know if I can do it.
He notes authors who have provided inspiration for his personal writing like Graham Greene and George Orwell.
[6] Murray compared a writer's voice in language to music and deemed its significance as the key factor in capturing an audience.
In this approach, the student explores their writing as a process that is constantly growing and never quite finished, empowering them to become more independent writers.
[16] While Murray's teaching strategies were especially popular in the late 20th century, his perspective on the writing process is found in the contemporary classroom for both secondary and postsecondary composition.
Because Murray emphasized the importance of the individual writer, composition theorists including James Berlin contended that he neglected the social aspect of writing.
[17] Post-process theorists also saw Murray and other proponents of process theory as enabling prescribed rules that limited the writer's ability to explore through writing and harked back to Current Traditional Rhetoric.
In 1951, he married Minnie Mae Emmerich[19] Murray and his wife had three children, Anne, Hannah, and Lee.