Cecil Murphey

Unleash the Writer Within sits in a trio of craft books Cecil Murphey aimed at beginners, alongside Writer to Writer and Ghostwriting: The Murphey Method, and it draws on the roughly 250 writers' conferences he has taught at, teaching being a paid part of his working life. Most of his own output is collaboration. He wrote 90 Minutes in Heaven with Don Piper, a near-death account that passed five million copies and twenty-six languages, and Gifted Hands with the surgeon Ben Carson, plus books with Franklin Graham and Shaun Alexander, more than 140 titles in all. Born in Hobart, Oklahoma in 1933, he spent 1961 to 1967 as a missionary in Kenya, earned a Master of Divinity at Columbia Theological Seminary, was ordained by the Presbyterian Church in 1970, and led an Atlanta congregation until he took up writing full time in 1984.