Eva Murray

Eva Murray moved from the Rockland area to Matinicus Island in 1987, having been hired to teach at the island’s one-room school. Two years later she married the island electrician and stayed to raise their family there (the children are now in college). Over the years she has become an emergency medical technician, started a small bakery, taken on a number of roles in municipal government and local organizations, started the community’s recycling program, and been a first responder to emergencies both real and imagined. Since 2003 she’s also been a regular columnist for several publications, among them Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, the Working Waterfront, the (Rockland) Herald Gazette and Free Press, and Down East Online.

Her first book, Well Out to Sea—Year -round on Matinicus Island, published by Tilbury House in 2010, is a collection of essays about how things really work in a tiny, isolated community. Island Schoolhouse-one room for all: the 21st century one-room schools of Maine, also published by Tilbury House, should be out in August of 2012.

Eva bakes bread in a wood stove, spins wool, digs potatoes, collects useful herbs, cuts hay with a scythe and swings a blacksmith’s hammer. She sometimes writes her articles with pencil and paper.