The Hope Fault published in UK (and a playlist to celebrate)

The Hope Fault

The Hope Fault, my second novel, is making its way out into the world. This month marks its publication in UK, by the wise and wonderful team at Gallic Books. It’ll be published (in the same Gallic Books edition) in the US in October this year, and later this year it will be published in Italy … Read more…

Music to warm a book by

Wallaby at Meow (photo Helen Kettles)

This week we held a bookwarming in Wellington to celebrate the publication earlier in the month of my second novel, The Hope Fault. A bunch of us gathered (like the bunch of people in my book gather) to talk and drink and eat, under the unsettling but appropriate gaze of the wallabies and possums dotted about the … Read more…

‘The Undercover Soundtrack – Tracy Farr’ guest post

Playing theremin (photo: Matt Evans)

Writer, editor and writing blogger and teacher Roz Morris hosts The Undercover Soundtrack series, where she invites writers who use music as part of their creative environment, ‘perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths’. In a post for The Undercover Soundtrack (27 April 2016), I write about some of the music that helped … Read more…

The intriguing theremin

Some of the most interesting responses I’ve had to my novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, have been to do with the musical instrument that Lena plays: the theremin. Readers have thought I made it up, that it couldn’t possibly be real. I’ve written a few posts about the theremin: here and here, … Read more…

‘Life, love and the theremin’ interview on RNZ

Tracy Farr talks with Lynn Freeman from Radio New Zealand’s Arts on Sunday about the theremin, the nature of home, and The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt. The interview was broadcast on Arts on Sunday (6 October 2013), prompting the show’s musical motif of tracks featuring theremin. Listen to the interview: You can read show notes and … Read more…

‘Tracy Farr’s The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt’ interview, ABC RN

When I was in Perth last week I talked with Miyuki Jokiranta from ABC Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily about sound and light, theremins, the space between, and my novel The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt. The interview was broadcast today, and you can download audio or listen here.

It’s instrumental

In my novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, the eponymous Lena Gaunt – musician, octogenarian, junkie – is Music’s Most Modern Musician; theremin player of legend. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about theremins for the last few years, while I’ve been writing the novel. I may even have become a little obsessed with them … Read more…