AustLit logo
Stephen Orr Stephen Orr i(A65333 works by)
Born: Established: 1967 ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

Stephen Orr’s career began as a runner-up in the 2002 Vogel/Australian award. He has worked as a journalist and teacher.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2021 shortlisted The Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award for 'Eleven Stories'.
2020 recipient Copyright Agency Limited Fellowship
2019 recipient Cultural Fund Fellowships Author Fellowship $80,000 for for his work The Journey

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon This Excellent Machine Kent Town : Wakefield Press , 2019 16790616 2019 single work novel

'Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages him, but maybe it's just another dead end? To make sense of the world, Clem uses his telescope to spy on his neighbours. From his wall, John Lennon gives him advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) tells him he's a pervert; his best friend, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante and, as the year progresses and the essays go unwritten, he starts to understand the excellence of it all.

'His Pop, facing the first dawn of dementia, determined to follow an old map into the desert in search of Lasseter's Reef. His old neighbour, Vicky, returning to Lanark Avenue - and a smile is all it takes. Followed by a series of failed driving tests; and the man at his door, claiming to be his father.

'It's going to be a long year, but in the end Clem emerges from the machine a different person, ready to face what he now understands about life, love, and the importance of family and neighbours.'   (Publication summary)

2021 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
y separately published work icon Incredible Floridas Mile End : Wakefield Press , 2017 12242161 2017 single work novel

'As Hitler's war looms, famous Australian artist Roland Griffin returns home from London with his family to live a simple life of shared plums and low-cut lawns in the suburbs.

'In the yard: a daughter, and a son, Hal, growing up with a preoccupied father who is always out in his shed stretching canvases and painting outback pubs. An isolated man obsessed with other people and places. Everything is a picture, a symbol. Even Hal, the boy in the boat, drifting through a strange world of Incredible Floridas.

'As the years pass, Roland learns that Hal is unable to control his own thoughts, impulses, behaviour. The boy becomes the destroyer of family. The neighbourhood is enlisted to help Hal find a way forward. Child actor, a clocker at Cheltenham Racecourse, an apprentice race caller. Incredible Floridas describes Hal's attempts at adulthood, love, religion, and the hardest thing of all: gaining his father's approval.' (Publication summary)

2019 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
y separately published work icon Ambassadors from Another Time Southbank : Australian Book Review, Inc. , 2020 11968814 2017 single work essay

'First, I need to visit Dean Nicolle’s eucalypt arboretum. Four hundred rows of trees, four specimens of each species of EucalyptusCorymbia, and Angophora (the eucalypts) nestled together, sharing pollen and landscape, dropping limbs in the grass. Each group of trees is a result of the previous year’s fieldwork. The year 2000 was big: Nicolle this keeper of the keys to the eucalypts spent six months in Western Australia collecting seed.' (Introduction)

2017 recipient Eucalypt Fellowship
Last amended 16 Jun 2021 14:53:35
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X