Stephen Orr

Stephen Orr (born 1967) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. His works are set in uniquely Australian settings ranging from coastal towns to outback regions and explore the dynamics of Australian families and communities. His best-known novel, Time’s Long Ruin (Wakefield Press (Australia), 2010), examines the impact of the disappearance of three children on a small Adelaide community in 1960.
==Life==
Stephen Orr was born and grew up 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). In the early nineties he wrote and directed several plays for a small Adelaide theatre company before deciding to adapt one, Attempts to Draw Jesus, into his first novel. 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. Many of his novels use real events as starting points for an examination of complex family and community dynamics. He continues to teach high school English and mentor young writers. He is married and has two children.
==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 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==
* 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
Young Adult novel:
* The Lanternist 2021
Short Story Collections:
* Datsunland 2017
* The Boy in Time 2022
Theatre and screenplays:
* Vocations (musical revue: music, book and lyrics) 1990
* Attempts to Draw Jesus (play) 1993
* Moses/The Athanasius Mole (play) 1994
* The Last Gasp of vaudeville (play) 1995
* Bloodwood (screenplay adaptation of the novel Attempts to Draw Jesus, co-written with Peter O’Brien) 2014
* Westward Ho! (play for voices) 2012
Awards
* 2000: Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, runner-up (Attempts to Draw Jesus)
* 2008: SA Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, winner (Time’s Long Ruin)
* 2010: Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, highly commended (Time’s Long Ruin)
* 2011: Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, shortlisted (Time’s Long Ruin)
* 2011: Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted (Time’s Long Ruin)
* 2014: Ned Kelly Awards, Best Crime Fiction, runner-up (One Boy Missing)
* 2016: Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted (The Hands)
* 2019: Dublin International Literary Award, longlisted (Incredible Floridas)
* 2021: Dublin International Literary Award, longlisted (This Excellent Machine)
* 2022: Patricia Hackett Prize for non-fiction, winner (‘The Boy in Time’)
Category:1967 births
Category:Australian novels by writer