Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Tracy Farr is a Melbourne-born, Perth-raised, New Zealand-based writer and former research scientist. Her debut novel The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (Fremantle Press, 2013), was longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award, shortlisted for the 2014 WA Premier’s Book Awards and the 2014 Barbara Jefferis Award, and will be published in the UK (Aardvark Bureau) in early 2016. Her short fiction has won awards and been published in anthologies and literary journals. She’s held a number of writing fellowships and residencies, including (July 2015) the inaugural Mildura Writers Festival Residency.

Tracy grew up in Perth, and studied Science then Arts at the University of Western Australia. She spent five years in Canada in the early 90s. Since 1996 she’s lived in Wellington, New Zealand. She’s currently working on her second novel.

Tracy Farr’s website

Twitter: @hissingswan

Facebook: /tracyfarrauthor

HOW DID YOU GET…

007 is back.

The first full trailer for Spectre was released this week, and by the looks of it, the film is aiming to be modern, gritty and solemn while also still catering to Bond’s iconic film history by including all the expected: globetrotting, girls, gadgets, and guns.

This is Daniel Craig’s fourth go-around as Bond, and there’s something of a clearing-of-the-decks and a reset on the series.

The massively successful Skyfall, you may remember, ended with the the death of M (Judi Dench) following a weird finale battle set in Bond’s ancestral home in Scotland.

The sequence was part Monarch of the Glen, part Home Alone.

In the new film Bond’s new boss (Ralph Fiennes) is dealing with office politics (Andrew Scott, glimpsed briefly in the trailer, wants his job). Naomie Harris returns as Moneypenny and it looks like she will get to do more than…

Western Australia is home to several world-class crime writers, and one of them is Felicity Young.

Felicity was born in Germany, attended boarding school in the UK, and emigrated to Western Australia with her parents in 1976. She, her husband and their three children moved to a small farm 40 kilometres north of Perth in 1990, and now, when she is not writing, she works on their Suffolk sheep stud and rears orphaned kangaroos.

It’s no secret that I have loved Felicity’s Dody McCleland series since the first book was published in 2012. Set in Edwardian London, it features Britain’s first female autopsy surgeon, and I was interested to read on Felicity’s website that the background of this character is drawn from the life of Felicity’s grandmother, who was at that time one of only a handful of female graduates of Trinity College, Dublin. Crime plus historical fiction is an…

Patricia Keeler lives across the Hudson River from New York City in Hoboken, NJ, with her husband, photographer Francis X. McCall. Ms. Keeler received an undergraduate degree from Virginia Polytechnical and State University and a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. Before coming to Hoboken, Ms. Keeler worked in advertising for the Richmond Times Dispatch and was art director for PBS Television (WCVE, Channel 25) in Richmond, VA. She has illustrated and/or written many books, including Thank You, Angels (Hay House, 2007), Drumbeat in Our Feet (Lee & Low, 2006), Car Wash (Lee & Low, 2004), A Huge Hog Is a Big Pig (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2002), and Unraveling Fibers (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon and Schuster, 1995). She is the illustrator for Brain Food: 100+ Games That Make Kids Think, published by Prufrock Press. Ms. Keeler has also created a variety of illustrations for magazines, posters, and educational projects with…

Another year, another film by David O. Russell that stars Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert de Niro.

Looking back on my reviews of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, I was probably too kind to them.

I recently rewatched both films and while the performances are strong, Russell’s narrative now seems unwieldy. American Hustle, in particular, indulges in all sorts of 1970s fetishism and wallows in the excess of the period. Did I really give it 5 out of 5?!?

I think I wrote that he encourages improvisation in his cast, and that can be a good thing, but maybe he needs to rein it in.

And cut back on the Scorcese-isms.

Oh, what’s this, a Rolling Stone song?

Joy tells the story of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop. A single mother of three, Mangano struggled to make it as an inventor before…

Today was what is traditionally described in Ireland as ‘a soft day.’ That’s a nice term for a misty, drizzly, warmish kind of a day when you think you’ll never see a blue sky again.

When I peeped out the front door in semi-despair this morning, the haunting look of our Monkey Puzzle tree carried me away from thoughts of blue and the blues:

Monkey Puzzle

Softness was playing in the prickly branches and the greens were greener than green.

All thoughts of staying in and waiting for the ‘day to rise’ left me and Stan and I headed to a deserted Garrarus Beach where the tide was fully out. It certainly wasn’t the stuff of picture postcards looking out to sea but the shoreline carried all sorts of soft promises:

Garrarus Beach, Co. Waterford

This was a day to focus on the gifts that the high tide…

If you’re looking at the heading of this post and wondering what the heck, these things have a place in a new story of mine that has just been published in Review of Australian Fiction.

RAF is a fabulous online publication dedicated to short works of fiction. It publishes two stories every two weeks, delivered in mobi (for Kindle) or ePub (for iPhone/iPad, Kobo, Nook, Readmill) format, and each issue pairs an established writer with an emerging writer.

The six-issue volume that has just begun is a special one featuring Western Australian writers—an innovative and generous gesture of support by the editors following the announcement a few months ago that funding for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards would, in effect, be halved. Commissioning editor for the volume is Laurie Steed, whose own stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies; his is one of…