Playwright, librettist, and translator John Murrell was born in 1945 in Lubbock, Texas, and died on November 11, 2019 of leukaemia in Calgary, Alberta. He completed a BFA degree at Southwestern University in Texas, and came to Canada in 1968 with his wife, Cindy Galbreath. He graduated from the University of Calgary with an education degree, and began writing plays while teaching in Alberta’s public schools. His second play, Power in the Blood (1975), about a female evangelist experiencing a life crisis, won the University of Alberta’s Clifford E. Lee playwriting award, encouraging Murrell to write full-time.