The Boy in Time (stories 2018-2023)
A plane in the distance, artillery, his father waiting, and the boy wonders what to do. As with every story in this collection, the child born into a world he can’t comprehend, but stands waiting for answers, overcome with possibilities. The Boy in Time charts this child’s progress from the Outer Hebrides to a Mongolian desert, from war to kidnapping, a Midwestern American nightmare, falling from the wheel-well of a Dreamliner. This collection captures a child’s bewilderment of what it’s like to be alive.
Sydney Morning Herald/Age review (Steven Carroll and Cameron Woodhead) here.
Extract ('The Budgerigar') in InDaily. A story about a boy, a budgerigar and J.D. Salinger.
'Mrs Meiners has gone to get chalk'. ANZ LitLovers here.
Some thoughts from ReadPlus here.
Tasmanian Bibiliophile casts her eyes over TBiT!
Datsunland (stories 2008-2017)
A long-deserted drive-in, waiting for a rerun of the one story that might give it life; a child who discovers his identity in a photograph hidden in his parents’ room . . . Stephen Orr’s stories are happy to let you in, but not out. In Datsunland, his characters are outsiders peering into worlds they don’t recognise, or understand: an Indian doctor arriving in the outback, discovering an uncomfortable truth about the Australian dream; a family trying to have their son’s name removed from a Great War cowards’ list; a confused teenager with a gun making an ad for an evangelical ministry. Each story is set in a place where, as Borges described, ‘heaven and hell seem out of proportion’.
Read an extract ('The Photographer's Son') in Indaily here.
Sydney Morning Herald review (Kerryn Goldsworthy) here.
Newtown Review of Books review (Carmel Bird) here.
Read the novella 'Datsunland' in the Griffith Review here.
Nice fireside chat with the folks at Griffith Review about short fiction writing. Read it here.
Published Short Stories
'The god of bike bells' (Apricity Magazine, October 2023)
'Granny Knot' (Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, August 2023)
'Our Chemical Art' (Spare Parts Lit Vol. 6, April 2023)
'The Budgerigar' (InDaily, February 2023)
'The Dogs' (Wensum, Issue 1 Winter 2023)
'A perfect day for bream' (The Saturday Paper, July 2022)
'Violettowne' (The Saturday Paper, March 2022)
Great to have a story in Australia's newest lit mag, The Saltbush Review. 'Troubridge Shoals' is set off and on Troubridge Island and concerns a precocious child and his weary mother.
'The Quickest Way Home' (The Saturday Paper, October 2021)
'Point Nemo' (Burning House Press, April 2020)
'Mrs Meiners has gone to get chalk' and 'The Sooty Copper' (Thrill Me, Glimmer Press, April 2020)
'First Thought' (Burning House Press, September 2019)
'From where the birch takes the sun' (Burning House Press, July 2019)
'The Holotype' (Island 157, June 2019)
'Box of Bones' (Island 151, November 2017)
'The Shack' (Southerly 76/2 Writing Disability, January 2017). You can read it here.
'The Pyap School' (Transnational Literature, May 2016). You can read it here.
'The Photographer's Son' (Quadrant, November 2013)
Extract from An Australian Wake (novel-in-progress) (Southerly 73/1, 2013)
Riverland Stories ('The Photographer's Son', 'The Barmera Drive-In', 'The Pyap School', 'The Shack'). Click here to hear these stories read by the author on ABC radio.
'Jesus Toast' (Geek Mook, Vignette Press, May 2012)
'Guarding the Pageant' (Strange Tales of a Small City, Wakefield Press Anthology, February 2009)
'The Confirmation' (Writers’ Radio, May 2009; Quadrant, September 2009)
'The Shot-put' (Meanjin, December 2008)
'Dr Singh’s Despair' (Southerly 68/1, August 2008)
'Granny Knot' (Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, August 2023)
'Our Chemical Art' (Spare Parts Lit Vol. 6, April 2023)
'The Budgerigar' (InDaily, February 2023)
'The Dogs' (Wensum, Issue 1 Winter 2023)
'A perfect day for bream' (The Saturday Paper, July 2022)
'Violettowne' (The Saturday Paper, March 2022)
Great to have a story in Australia's newest lit mag, The Saltbush Review. 'Troubridge Shoals' is set off and on Troubridge Island and concerns a precocious child and his weary mother.
'The Quickest Way Home' (The Saturday Paper, October 2021)
'Point Nemo' (Burning House Press, April 2020)
'Mrs Meiners has gone to get chalk' and 'The Sooty Copper' (Thrill Me, Glimmer Press, April 2020)
'First Thought' (Burning House Press, September 2019)
'From where the birch takes the sun' (Burning House Press, July 2019)
'The Holotype' (Island 157, June 2019)
'Box of Bones' (Island 151, November 2017)
'The Shack' (Southerly 76/2 Writing Disability, January 2017). You can read it here.
'The Pyap School' (Transnational Literature, May 2016). You can read it here.
'The Photographer's Son' (Quadrant, November 2013)
Extract from An Australian Wake (novel-in-progress) (Southerly 73/1, 2013)
Riverland Stories ('The Photographer's Son', 'The Barmera Drive-In', 'The Pyap School', 'The Shack'). Click here to hear these stories read by the author on ABC radio.
'Jesus Toast' (Geek Mook, Vignette Press, May 2012)
'Guarding the Pageant' (Strange Tales of a Small City, Wakefield Press Anthology, February 2009)
'The Confirmation' (Writers’ Radio, May 2009; Quadrant, September 2009)
'The Shot-put' (Meanjin, December 2008)
'Dr Singh’s Despair' (Southerly 68/1, August 2008)
