Welcome to the corner deli
T i m e 's Long Ruin is Orr's eloquent, unusual, bold but responsible retelling of a veritable urban nightmare that still haunts the Australian imagination.
(Peter Pierce, Sydney Morning Herald)
The writing is accomplished, the imagery beautifully evocative ... despite the distressing subject matter at its core, this is a deeply affectionate novel.
(Jo Case, The Age)
It is Orr's cleaving of the ordinary to the unspeakable that gives the novel its potency and brings it within the margins of the Australian Gothic.
(Hannah Kent, The Big Issue)
Time's Long Ruin is a fine novel, thoughtful and unsentimental, convincing without being predictable.
(Gillian Dooley, Australian Book Review)
T h i s information has been cobbled together as a rough guide to the life, times and work of Stephen Orr. This, I suppose, is the corner deli of author websites. Slightly shabby, stocked with overpriced and out-of-date essentials.
At some point in every writer's life it becomes easier to make a website than try to collect and preserve articles, stories, photographs, links, names and reviews. Hence, the deli. The floor is covered with lifting lino and the walls with exposed wires and posters for Sterling 25s. There’s a Telecom phone with links to a world of literary stuff, and an internet café with a Commodore 64, ready to download your favourite eBook. It’s all here: baked beans and Bukowski, Golding and a rack of sun-bleached Steven Seagal videos.
At some point in every writer's life it becomes easier to make a website than try to collect and preserve articles, stories, photographs, links, names and reviews. Hence, the deli. The floor is covered with lifting lino and the walls with exposed wires and posters for Sterling 25s. There’s a Telecom phone with links to a world of literary stuff, and an internet café with a Commodore 64, ready to download your favourite eBook. It’s all here: baked beans and Bukowski, Golding and a rack of sun-bleached Steven Seagal videos.
Riverland Stories is a collection of stories written for the National Year of Reading. They were the result of a two-week residency at Banrock Station during 2012. The stories concern Daisy Bates' time camped along the Murray at Pyap, the fate of the Barmera drive-in, a father's love (and sacrifice) for his disabled son and an early Riverland memento mori, as death comes early to a farming family. You can read them under the SA category here.
Click here to listen to me rattling on to the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, about writing in Oz. Recorded during the 2013 Adelaide Festival.
French edition of Time's Long Ruin, Presses de la Cite, 2012
