María Murillo

María Murillo enjoys life's simple pleasures: reading mystery novels, managing the household, spending time with her pets, and painting with pastels. Her writing has been shaped by keen observation and an intuitive sense for building narrative estructure and connecting the dots coherently. Without formal training in literary fiction techniques, she considers herself self-thaught and a harsh critic of her own work—an unwritten but essential rule for any endeavor. She earned a bilingual business degree from the Women's University founded in 1943 by a woman ahead of her time. María has found an inspirational role model in this founder—not only as director's of México's women universities, but also for her work as a writer, educator, and tireless activist through her foundations supporting child nutrition, the visually impaired and animal's rights. Honored with numerous awards in the Americas and in Europe with the order of Orange-Nassau, she was a remarkable Mexican woman to whom María dedicated the print edition of her first novel. After graduating she began working in the tourism industry, which inspired her to write about a family that owns a renowned hotel in Mexico City—a manuscript with historical touches that simmered slowly over time. Today she has published three novels, each one distinct stories and settings—Hotel Señorial, Ask the Butler and Naturally Human— but somehow linked through Nestor Casanova, a writer character she describes as the eternal apprentice. After all, we are all eternal apprentices when it comes to our greatest project: life itself.