Tracy Farr
Tracy Farr is a writer who used to be a scientist.
Her short fiction has won awards (including New Zealand’s Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award), been published in anthologies and literary journals and adapted for radio. She’s been awarded residencies and fellowships in Australia and Aotearoa, including residencies at Michael King Writers Centre (2018, 2021) and Robert Lord Writers Cottage (2025).
Tracy’s debut novel The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, first published in Australia in 2013, was shortlisted in 2014 for the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. It was published in the UK and US in 2016, and adapted for radio by RNZ (2014).
Her second novel, The Hope Fault, was published in Australia/NZ (2017), UK, US and Italy (2018). The Hope Fault was adapted for the stage by the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and premiered in their 2019 season.
Tracy was awarded the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize in 2024 for her third novel, Wonderland, which is published by The Cuba Press in 2025.
Tracy is curator and host of the live literary series Bad Diaries Salon and its sister project, Bad Diaries Podcast.
Genre:
- Adult Fiction
- Fiction
- Short Stories
Skills:
- Editing
- Mentoring
- Novelist
- Proofreading
- Public Speaking
- Readings (adults)
- Research
- Short Story Writing
- Workshops (adults)
Branch:
Wellington
Location:
Wellington
Publications:
Wonderland (The Cuba Press, 2025)
Te Motu Kairangi Miramar Peninsula, Wellington 1912
Doctor Matti Loverock spends her days and nights bringing babies into the world, which means her daughters – seven-year-old triplets Ada, Oona and Hanna – have grown up at Wonderland, the once-thriving amusement park owned by their father, Charlie.
Then a grieving woman arrives to stay from the other side of the world, in pain and incognito, fleeing scandal. She ignites the triplets’ curiosity and brings work for Matti, diverting them all from what is really happening at Wonderland.
In a bold reimagining, Marie Curie – famous for her work on radioactivity – comes to Aotearoa and discovers both solace and wonder.
Winner of the 2024 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize.
The Hope Fault (Fremantle Press, 2017)
In Cassetown, Geologue Bay, Iris and her extended family — her ex-husband and his wife and their new baby; her son and her best friend’s daughter – gather on a midwinter long weekend, to pack up the family holiday house now that it has been sold. They are together for one last time, one last weekend, one last party. As the house is stripped bare, their secrets — and the complex, messy nature of family relationships — will be revealed.
The Hope Fault is a celebration of the complexities of family — aunties and steps and exes, and a baby in need of a name; parents and partners who are missing, and the people who replace them.It’s about the faultlines that run under the surface, and it’s about uncertainty — the unsettling notion that the earth might shift, literally or metaphorically, at any moment. It’s a contemporary novel that plays with time and with ways of telling stories. It finds poetry and beauty in science, and pattern and magic in landscape.
The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (Fremantle Press, 2013)
This is the story of Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie. Spanning continents and much of the twentieth century, from colonial Malacca to post-war Europe, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt is a story of talent, modernity and belonging, of a life shaped by the ebb and flow of love and loss, and the constant pull of the sea.
Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the 2014 WA Premier's Book Award and the 2014 Barbara Jefferis Award.