Author + Essayist
Writing about family, identity & connection
ABOUT GERALYN
Geralyn Broder Murray is an author and essayist whose work explores family, identity and connection. Her essays have appeared in Huffington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, Shondaland, The Sacramento Bee and other publications. Her 2024 HuffPost essay reached more than 55,000 readers and was subsequently featured by BuzzFeed and Yahoo. Geralyn is the author of the Pea to Pumpkin books—a pregnancy journal and baby journal published by Sourcebooks. Before becoming an executive communications writer, she worked in advertising as a copywriter and associate creative director for over 25 years.
Geralyn's writing has been recognized by UCLA Extension, where her novel Resonance was named a semifinalist for the 2026 Allegra Johnson Prize. She is also a recipient of a City of Sacramento Creative Growth Grant.
Geralyn lives in Northern California with her husband, near the two young adults children they adore. When she isn't writing or drawing, she's usually reading, walking or running late to yoga.
Geralyn is represented by Rachel Neumann of Wave Literary.
SELECTED WRITING
HUFFINGTON POST, March 2024
My father came back into my life via the post office.
"During the summer I turned 14, I came home to a typewritten letter waiting for me on my bedspread. My dad had entered a drug treatment program — part of his rehabilitation was writing to his family about what he’d been through, and to apologize if necessary.
Apologies were necessary.
My father had disappeared five or six years before, after a custody battle and then a failure to pay child support. Since then, we’d moved away, and my mother remarried and had a second child. The few memories I had of my father were mostly of a swimming pool that made my eyes bloodshot, animals that I loved and an awful skin rash I picked up when he’d taken me to Hawaii without telling my mother."
THE JEWISH JOURNAL, December 2021
"Beverlywood Bakery is where my grandmother — my Bubby — and I got off the public bus after shopping at the May Company department store every Saturday of my childhood. I always got a free rainbow sprinkled cookie if I was quiet while Bubbie selected her goods: challah (medium-sliced), marble loaf, rye bread (thin-sliced) and always, chocolate chip rolls. If you haven’t had a chocolate chip roll — especially the kind made at a Jewish bakery — stop reading this and go get one immediately. You will discover a delight of buttery, chocolate-studded pastry so delicious that, when you take a bite, all you will be able to think about is the next one."
SACRAMENTO BEE, January 2024
In a divided world, sometimes the best place to connect is on the road.
"Whether it’s the absence of the distractions of normal life or simply a gift from the universe, the people placed in my path on these travels have uniquely expanded my world, and their impact has stayed with me long after the trips are a distant memory."
SHONDALAND, September 2021
The incomparable joy of visiting a bookstore in real life.
"For all of us who are comforted and inspired by the written word, and by the ability to connect to one another because of it, may we be heartened to know there are still places where one can discover who we want to become."
USA TODAY, January 2022
Sex and the City's "And Just Like That" gets longtime friendship right
"My own group of besties have gone through divorce and sickness, big wins and life-changing losses. Unlike the "Sex and the City" ladies, we do not share the same city or even the same state, but we stay connected in all the ways we can. We stretch our 30-year friendship across ourselves like a cozy blanket on a cold night. "What’s the latest?" we ask, listening patiently for the answer. We do what we can; we text, we call, we say in a million little ways I’ve got you and thank you. We choose, for a lifetime, to stay."
USA TODAY, May 2021
We've survived the worst year of our lives. Let's not lose our minds over a hot dog.
"In April, my family and I entered our local Triple-A baseball park for the first time in almost two years. As we strolled into the stadium, the crowd was masked, polite and socially distanced. We walked through the gates in wonder that it was all still there — the stands, the concessions, the wafting smells of popcorn and hot dogs. Aside from the masks and the reduced capacity, it felt exactly like every baseball game I’ve been to since my first one at Dodger Stadium, a lifetime ago.
Until we got hungry."
MEDIUM, September 2020
Want to save the republic? Find your Kippy Kaufman.
" Scrolling through her page, I realized my new friend and I had diametrically opposing political views; no, this can’t be, but she was so lovely. As though having a different view of the world and being lovely couldn’t both be true. Of course, I still accepted, she was Kippy after all: the fact that she supported our current president was not going to keep me from being her friend — Facebook or otherwise. Over the past seven months, we’ve messaged each other and shared updates and joys: Greg’s miraculous recovery from a long coma, my niece Ainsley’s progress from four-pound preemie to thriving infant. As the world has since closed in around us, as we’ve sheltered in place, Kippy and I have held virtual hands."
NEWSWEEK, May 2021
Science supports Biden's plan for Federal Family Leave
"When I heard about the proposal, what immediately came to mind was an old photograph I discovered recently of my mother lovingly holding my newborn self; seeing it had been a revelation—and a confirmation of why I'd always known how much I was loved, despite having a difficult childhood. I'd previously thought the degree of my mother's love helped cushion me from the impact of an absent father, an angry stepfather and an awkward teenage-hood; now it made me wonder about the power of love as protection."