We're thrilled to announce some exciting news from across the seas this week, as the long-list for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award is released. Amongst a host of stellar books sits our very own Stephen Orr and his marvellous This Excellent Machine. Read on to find out what the judges are saying ...
Continue readingWhat right do I have to talk about this place? What do I know about it? How much can I feel, can I see and smell and hear the suffering? These are the questions author and teacher Stephen Orr asked himself after visiting the remains of the Auschwitz prison camp. In this guest post, Stephen writes of the importance of feeling pain that is not necessarily yours, and of remembering what has happened in the…
Continue readingThe #tenyearchallenge has been dominating social media for the past few weeks, but today author Stephen Orr looks even further back in this 2006 article about his childhood in the suburbs of 1970s Adelaide. Keep an eye out for Stephen's next novel, This Excellent Machine, which will be released in April 2019. Smith Street I want to tell you about the street I grew up in. We’ll call it Smith…
Continue readingWe decided it was time to bring back our popular author profiles, and who better to start with than Stephen Orr. Stephen Orr is the award-winning author of six novels, including Time's Long Ruin, The Hands, Hill of Grace and Dissonance. Peter Goers has called him South-Australia’s finest novelist. A fascination with the dynamics of families and small communities pervades his fiction and non-fiction. He contributes essays and features to several magazines, journals and newspapers. Stephen's short…
Continue readingAlright, let's keep this snappy. You guys need gift ideas, and we've got a book for every possible need.* So welcome to the patented Ultimate Wakefield Press Christmas Gift Guide.** For adventure-packed holiday reading, try the Steve West thrillers, centring around an ex-AFL star geologist with a heart of gold. Start with Prohibited Zone, set around the Woomera Detention Centre, then move on Ecstasy Lake, which is about a literal goldmine in the middle of the desert. For fiction…
Continue readingA guest blog from our adventuring novelist Stephen Orr, who's currently conquering Europe. You can check out Stephen's award-winning novels here. -- Sitting on a train from Berlin to Munich, it seems a good time to ruminate (lack of cows in fields, although plenty of wind turbines) on the nature of lit-tourism. Just past Dessau, villages, birch and the fiery glare from the white-blue eyes of an old man (what? what am I doing wrong?) across…
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