Sonia Nair reviews The Hope Fault for ABR

ABR September 2017

Sonia Nair reviewed The Hope Fault for the Australian Book Review (September 2017, no. 394). The minutiae and messiness of family life as it comes together and unravels time and time again are delicately rendered in Tracy Farr’s second novel, The Hope Fault. The unrelenting rain that forms the lugubrious backdrop for much of the novel conjures up the same … Read more…

Writers on Mondays – Hopeful Animals, Wellington

Writers on Mondays programme front page 2017

I’m really excited about being part of the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) Writers on Mondays programme this year, which includes – as well as a whole mob of great New Zealand writers – Australian writer Charlotte Wood (24 July – see programme). Writers on Mondays has been running for nearly a decade now, … Read more…

‘Family Dynamics’ at Auckland Writers Festival

The programme has been launched for Auckland Writers Festival 2017, which runs from 16 to 21 May. I’ll be there — this’ll be my fifth time attending AWF, my second time as a guest of the festival. I’m in one of the Four for Fifty Readings sessions — fifty-minute events in which four writers read from their recent work. Each session is themed; … Read more…

This festive season

Dancing on the beach, 1920, William James (public domain)

May is my birthday month (thus always a time of celebrations and joy to the  world, right?). But this May feels extra-festive, cause for much shimmying, shaking, and leg-kicking, on the beach and elsewhere. The Hope Fault acquired by Aardvark Bureau I’ve been quietly dancing on the ceiling (and everywhere else) about this for a while, so I’m delighted to … Read more…

Aardvark Bureau to publish The Hope Fault

The Hope Fault (Fremantle Press, 2017)

I’m thrilled to share the news that UK publisher Aardvark Bureau (Gallic Books) has signed The Hope Fault, my novel ‘about family and fault lines’. Aardvark Bureau also published my first novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, in the UK and US in 2016. The acquisition announcement for The Hope Fault was reported in The Bookseller (11 May … Read more…

Lucy Walding reviews The Hope Fault for Westerly

The Hope Fault (Fremantle Press, 2017)

Lucy Walding reviewed The Hope Fault for Westerly (online). You can read the full review online at Westerly>From the Editor’s Desk. Westerly is the literary magazine published at the Westerly Centre (formerly the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature) at my alma mater (do Australians have an alma mater?), University of Western Australia, so I’m particularly thrilled that they’ve reviewed my novel. … Read more…

‘The Hope Fault: family and faultlines’ event at National Library, Wellington

Hope Fault close-up 2015 South Island Geology map, Unfolding the map exhibition

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe. — Robert Louis Stevenson I’m like RL Stevenson in that respect. I love a map. Maps, diagrams and geological bulletins (one bulletin in particular) caught my imagination and took over the reins while I was writing my novel The … Read more…

The most beautiful home movie ever made

Rachel Getting Married

I was sorry to hear, a fortnight ago, of the death of film director Jonathan Demme. The tweets and obits all namechecked the films he’s best known for: The Silence of the Lambs (1991, five Oscars), Philadelphia (1993, two Oscars), and (arguably the best concert film ever) Stop Making Sense (1984). But my thoughts turned first to … Read more…