Stephen Downes is a Melbourne writer and journalist. His debut novel The Hands of Pianists was among five (of 105) shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in 2022. Several of his short stories have been shortlisted and longlisted in the best UK short-fiction prizes. Last Meal won the 2020 Fiction Factory award. He covered a Middle-East war for Agence France-Presse, and a Pacific insurrection for The Age.

Stephen Downes’s new novel Mural was published by Transit Lounge in September 2024. The criminal narrator of Mural wrestles with the knowledge that Australia’s most prominent public artist Napier Waller painted erotic watercolours years before the religious and military stained-glass windows for which he is best-known. [https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/mural/]