About Lorin

Lorin Clarke

Hello.

Welcome to reading about me. I write, mostly. Sometimes I perform. I am currently directing a documentary film about my Dad, Kiwi/Australian satirist John Clarke.

My memoir/biography of my family, Would that be funny? Growing Up With John Clarke, is now available in all good bookshops (like there’s any other kind). There’s also an audiobook… read by me. If you listen to it, give it a rating (of 5 stars please and thank you). I don’t just make stuff about my family though, I promiose.

I wrote, directed and narrated the award-winning ABC RN audio fiction serial, The Fitzroy Diaries (originally aired on ABC RN's Life Matters), which you can find here or wherever you get your podcasts. There are currently three series of The Fitzroy Diaries, which was made with producer Sophie Townsend and an incredible cast and crew. It is reviewed in The Australian here. It won the Best Fiction award at the Australian Podcast Awards in May 2019.

I write for TV (mostly children's television) including for Beep and Mort (ABC TV), Eddie’s Lil Homies (NITV/Netflix) The Wonder Gang (ABC TV), Kangaroo Beach (ABC TV), Big Words, Small Stories (ABC TV), Larry the Wonderpup (Seven, ABC TV), Kitty is Not a Cat (Seven) , Bluey (ABC TV), and Monster Beach. I script edited a documentary series called The Hipster and series one of ABC TV comedy, The Librarians.

My children's book, a CBCA Most Notable book in 2017, is Our (Last) Trip to the Market, published by Allen & Unwin, illustrated by Mitch Vane.

I am a regular columnist for The Big Issue where I write a very helpful and scientifically significant Public Service Announcement twice a month (haphazardly posted here).

I used to co-present a short, erratic, incredibly shambolic podcast called The Stupidly Small Podcast with excellent idiot Stew Farrell. More here.

I sometimes turn up on radio. I used to co-present the daily breakfast radio show the Breakfasters on Melbourne radio station 3RRR. For almost two years prior to that I co-hosted with Alicia Sometimes a weekly show about books, writing and spoken word, called Aural Text. I have worked as a producer and presenter for commercial radio and for Radio National. 

I am quite judgemental, as it turns out. I was a judge in the 2020 ‘On Air’ Writers Guild award for audio writing. I also judged for the drama category of the 2016 Premier's Literary Awards. And for the inaugural Just Pretending Hotdesk Residency for emerging women playwrights. I judged the Melbourne International Film Festival's shorts program in 2013. 

In 2017, I wrote the introduction to Tinkering, a book of writing by my Dad. 

I have written a few essays for Meanjin (one about theatre, one about the role of law in Australian politics, and one about the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which is discussed here on the Conversation Hour on 774 ABC radio). In July 2012 I did a critiquing cultures residency at Varuna, The Writers' House and a Hot Desk Fellowship at the Wheeler Centre (supported by the Readings Foundation). I have done two residencies at Bundanon and one at Varuna.

While I was at Melbourne University, I wrote a play called People Watching, which was awarded second prize in London in the International Student Playscript Competition, judged by playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn. Another show, For We Are Young and Free (about an intellectually curious Paris Hilton and an Australian girl seeking asylum in Canada) was one of three shows in the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival to be nominated for a Golden Gibbo Award.

I have an arts/law degree. 

One of my favourite jobs was working at a complaints desk. I met the most weird and wonderful people with the strangest things to say about the stupidest stuff. It was glorious.

Also here is Maria Bamford singing a song.