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Sunday afternoon of the Going West literary weekend Landfall in Unknown Seas is kicked off with Sarah Gaitanos and Helen Schamroth discussing stories of love and loss. Sarah’s new book, The Violinist charts the incredible story of Clare Galambos-Winter, holocaust survivor, musician and lover of life.

Klara Galambos (as she was known then) was a twenty-year-old violin student in Budapest in March 1944. During the war she was transported with the Jews of Szombathely to Auschwitz Birkenau. Sarah has laced impeccable research with the fragile memories of a survivor as she finds landfall in New Zealand and a new life as a violinist with the emerging National Orchestra.

Sarah Gaitanos is author of The Violinist: Clare Galambos Winter, Holocaust Survivor (VUP 2011) and Nola Millar: A Theatrical Life (VUP 2006) published by Victoria University Press; and co-author with Allan Bollard of bestseller, Crisis: One Central Governor and the Global Financial Collapse (AUP 2010). She has recently received a Creative New Zealand Award to write a biography of lawyer and human rights activist, Shirley Smith. Sarah is married with three adult sons and one grandson. Her interests include music, photography, and walking her dog in the hills of the Hutt Valley where she lives.

Helen Schamroth has worked as an artist, writer, arts consultant and curator in recent years. A strong advocate for the sector, she has written about art, craft and design for many publications, national and international and produced arts strategies for Waitakere City, Whangarei District and Nelson-Tasman Region. In 2005 she was awarded ONZM for her services to the arts.

Read an article about Clare Galambos –Winters (or Klara), the subject of The Violinist in the Listener, or listen to the National radio podcast interview with Sarah Gaitanos and Clare Galambos –Winters here