Bryan Murphy was born in Tunbridge Wells, a retirement town in deepest Kent, England. After he landed a degree in social psychology, his wanderlust took him abroad, where he learned to teach English and used that skill to live and work in interesting places in challenging times: Italy, Portugal, Angola, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Bulgaria. His time in war-torn Angola made him finally appreciate places like his home town, where very little happens. He has now hung up his itchy feet and settled in Turin, where he works as a translator.

The need to deal with other people's words every day prompted Bryan into moulding his own into poems, which in recent years have appeared widely on the Internet, occasionally in print and at the 2001 Venice Biennale. He regularly takes the opportunity to read his work at the Poetry on the Lake festival on the banks of Lake Orta.

His short stories set in a future “Padania” (today's Northern Italy) have become a regular feature in The Hiss Quarterly.