Stephen Orr

Stephen Orr is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. His works are set in uniquely Australian settings, including coastal towns, outback regions and the Australian suburbs. His fiction explores the dynamics of Australian families and communities. In a 2021 review of Orr’s Sincerely, Ethel Malley the author and critic Michael McGirr explained that Orr ‘is a prolific writer and his work is characterised by a methodical ability to deal with issues of substance. His writing has the energy required to sustain long narratives but is never histrionic.'

Life
Stephen Orr was born in the Adelaide suburb of Hillcrest, South Australia, later reimagined as Gleneagles in his 2019 novel This Excellent Machine. He attended Gilles Plains High School (now Avenues College). He completed a science degree at the University of Adelaide before studying one year of a music composition degree and a graduate diploma in education. He began his teaching career at Hervey Bay State High School in 1996. He has written widely on issues such as nature, education, writers and the art of writing.

He was a long-time contributor to The Adelaide Review (2008-2020) and has written for The Guardian, Advertiser, Sydney Morning Herald/Age, Australian Book Review and other Australian newspapers and journals.

Career
2000-2010 Orr’s first novel Attempts to Draw Jesus (based on the disappearance of two jackaroos in the Great Sandy Desert in 1986) was runner-up in the 2000 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award and published in 2002. His second novel, Hill of Grace, a portrait of a 1950s Barossa Valley religious cult awaiting the rapture, was released in 2004. In 2010 he published Time’s Long Ruin, a fictional study of grief following the disappearance of three children in 1960s Adelaide. It was later adapted by the State Opera of South Australia as the opera Innocence, with libretto by Adam Goodburn and music by Anne Cawrse. 2010-Present His 2012 novel Dissonance was a re-imagining of the lives of Rose and Percy Grainger. In the same year, his large scale ‘play for voices’ Westward Ho! was performed by a cast of international actors at the 2021 Adelaide Fringe Festival under the direction of Guy Masterson. His 2014 venture into crime writing, One Boy Missing, described the discovery of a lost boy in a small outback town, and the subsequent search for the cause of his trauma. The Hands (2015) was an examination of the fallout from drought and generational debt on a grazing family in remote South Australia. His novella ‘Datsunland’ was co-winner of the 2016 Griffith Review 54 Earthly Delights: The Novella Project IV and was published in the same year. This story also appeared in his 2017 book of short stories, Datsunland. Incredible Floridas (2017) was loosely based on the relationship between Australian artist Russell Drysdale and his son, Tim. His most recent books include a collection of outback stories (The Fierce Country, 2018), the semi-autobiographical novel This Excellent Machine (2019), a riff on the 1944 Ern Malley literary hoax (Sincerely, Ethel Malley, 2021) and a second collection of stories, The Boy in Time (2022). He was the Australian Book Review 2020 Eucalypt Fellow, completing the long-form essay Ambassadors from Another Time (2020). Concerned about a lack of engaging books for boys in his classes he wrote and published The Lanternist, an Edwardian adventure story with illustrations by Timothy Ide, in 2021.

Novels and novellas
Young Adult novel: Short Story Collections: Plays and Screenplays:
 * Attempts to draw Jesus 2002
 * Hill of Grace 2004
 * Time’s Long Ruin 2010
 * Dissonance 2012
 * One Boy Missing 2014
 * The Hands 2015
 * ‘Datsunland’ 2016
 * Incredible Floridas 2017
 * This Excellent Machine 2019
 * Sincerely, Ethel Malley 2021
 * Shining Like the Sun 2024
 * The Lanternist 2021
 * Datsunland 2017
 * The Boy in Time 2022
 * Bloodwood (screenplay adaptation of the novel Attempts to Draw Jesus, co-written with Peter O’Brien) 2014
 * Westward Ho! (play for voices) 2012