Stephen Orr – March 4 2018

Stephen is a teacher, author, playwright, literary reviewer and columnist. He has completed a Varuna Longlines residency, worked as a writer-in-residence in secondary schools, given workshops on fiction writing, judged writing awards, and has served on the board of the SA Writers’ Centre. Stephen’s abiding interest is in the dynamics of families and communities, as well as the plight of isolated ndividuals. His other novels include Attempts to Draw Jesus, Hill of Grace, One Boy Missing, The Hands and Incredible Floridas. His short stories have been published in such journals as Southerly, Meanjin and Quadrant, as well as in his collection, Datsunland. His play, Westward Ho!, was first performed at the 2012 Adelaide Fringe and his third novel, Time’s Long Ruin, formed the basis of librettist and producer Adam Goodburn’s opera, Innocence, with music composed by Anne Cawrse.

Dissonance
Wakefield Press, 2012; ISBN 9781862549456
In music, ‘dissonance’ speaks of an unstable tone combination; chords that express pain, grief and conflict. Dissonance: A Novel begins with 15 year old Erwin’s piano practice as he is forced by his mother, Madge, to tackle scales and studies for six hours a day. She is determined to produce Australia’s first great pianist and to help Erwin focus, she has exiled her husband, Johann, to the back shed, only allowing him back inside the house when he is dying of cancer. Madge then takes Erwin to Germany to continue his studies and late 1930s Hamburg forms the backdrop to an increasingly difficult love-triangle as Erwin is torn between the piano, his 16-year-old neighbour, Luise, and the demands of his love and devotion to his mother. This loose re-imagining of the ‘Frankfurt years’ of Rose and Percy Grainger is a novel about love in one of its most extreme and destructive forms, and about how people attempt to survive the threat of possession.

Time’s Long Ruin
Wakefield Press, 2009; ISBN 9781862548305
Nine-year-old Henry Page is a club-footed, deep-thinking loner, spending his summer holidays reading, roaming the melting streets of his suburb, playing with his best friend Janice and her younger brother and sister. When Janice asks him to spend the day at the beach with them, he declines; a decision that will stay with him forever. Based loosely on the disappearance of the Beaumont children from Glenelg beach on Australia Day, 1966, this is a novel about friendship, love and loss; a story about those left behind, and how they carry on: the searching, the disappointments, the plans and dreams that are only ever put on hold.