Marie-Aude Murail

Marie-Aude Murail (born 6 May 1954) is a French children's writer.

Her father Gerard Murail is a poet and her mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of her brothers and her younger sister also write: Lorris Murail () and Elvire Murail, aka Moka. The music composer Tristan Murail is her older brother.

In 1973, she married Pierre Robert, an INSEE bureaucrat, with whom she had three children, Benjamin (1977), Charles (1987) and Constance (1994).

She was born in Le Havre.

Murail has been writing since she was twelve years old.

After modern literature studies at the Sorbonne University – concluded with a thesis devoted to adapting classical novels for children – she earned her "stripes" at the Editions mondiales, where she published a hundred short stories in women's magazines (Intimité, Nous Deux) between 1980 and 1987. In the mid 1980s, her two first novels (for adults) were published by Swiss publisher Pierre-Marcel Favre:

Since her first story, "C'est mieux d'être bleu", published in 1985 in the Astrapi magazine, she has written over 80 books for children, most notably three series, "Emilien", "Nils Hazard" and "L'Espionne".

Most of her books were published by L'Ecole des Loisirs, Bayard and lately by Pocket.

Murail directs Emilien Pardini, a boy aged fourteen at the beginning of the series, who lives alone with his mother Sylvie. The various books follow him throughout his teen years. Murail exploits all the dramatic and comical resources of a contemporary single-parent family.

The series was republished in the Neuf collection (2006).

Alongside the "Emiliens", Murail initiates an adventure series in which Nils Hazard, an etruscologist and teacher at the Sorbonne University, assisted by ex-student Catherine Roque, now his secretary and girlfriend, has to solve detective plots.

Murail widens the range of her production, exploring a slightly fantastic daily life first in "Ma vie a changé" (1997), staging a librarian struggling with a domestic elf, then definitely delirious when this daily life mixes with vampires ("Amour, vampire et loup-garou", 1998) or aliens ("Tom Lorient", 1998). In 2002, teenagers' craving for video games inspired "Golem", where virtual reality bursts in the real world. Golem was also a three-person writing experience. Brother and sisters expressed, each in their own way, how they felt about it (see the writer's website). Marie-Aude led another writing project with her brother Lorris during the following year ("L'expérienceur", 2003).

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