From Under the Overcoat POD

(Paperback)

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A prize-winning collection of vivid, accessible stories. These fresh, contemporary stories can be read purely for the immense pleasure they offer. However, the stories can also be read for the way they explore elements from earlier works: from Maori myth and fairy tale to masterpieces by writers such as Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce and Anton Chekov. As the award-winning author says, those stories 'touched me deeply and I can recall their substance without hesitation'. Using them for inspiration, she also explores their concerns of dignity, honesty, bravery, weakness and passion. 'Sue Orr's stories have that riveting mesmerizing quality that makes the reader race on, hoping they will never end, yet desperate to find out what happens next. Their stylishness marks a new departure in contemporary short story writing, her weaving of new and vibrant stories on to concepts that began with the great masters of old is high-wire risk taking that succeeds magnificently. I admire these stories immensely: by turn tender, sly, comic, and always deeply informed about the ways of the human heart.' - Fiona Kidman

Author Bio

Sue Orr is the author of two short story collections. Etiquette for a Dinner Party (2008) won the Lilian Ida Smith Award and From Under the Overcoat (2011) was shortlisted for the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and won the People's Choice Award. Her fiction has been published in New Zealand and international anthologies and translated into Spanish. In 2011 she was the Sargeson Buddle Findlay Fellow. She has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology and Massey University and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University, Wellington. She lives in Auckland with her family. 'If you only have time for one new local writer in your life then make sure it is Sue Orr,' wrote novelist and critic Nicky Pellegrino in the Herald on Sunday. Etiquette for a Dinner Party presents 'a wonderfully diverse, yet believable collection of characters and maladies stretching across a classic New Zealand landscape' (The Otago Daily Times), with stories which offer an 'intriguing, sharp-eyed exploration of gaps and misunderstandings between people, and gaps between hopes or expectations and reality, with some nicely black twists and turns thrown in' (The New Zealand Listener). Fiona Kidman wrote of From Under the Overcoat: 'Sue Orr's stories have that mesmerising quality that makes the reader race on, hoping they will never end, yet desperate to find out what happens next. Their stylishness marks a new departure in contemporary short-story writing, her weaving of new and vibrant stories on to concepts that began with the great masters is high-wire risk taking that succeeds magnificently. I admire these stories immensely: by turn tender, sly, comic, and always deeply informed about the ways of the human heart.' Orr has a twitter account: @SueMOrr.