Tracey Slaughter was born in Papatoetoe in 1972, and grew up on the Coromandel Peninsula. Her poetry and short fiction have been widely anthologised in New Zealand and received numerous awards. Her first collection of poems and short stories, Her body rises, was published by Random House (2005), and her novella, The Longest Drink in Town by Pania Press (2015). Her short story collection, deleted scenes for lovers, (Victoria University Press, 2016) contains 17 stories, some of which have already won awards, and was longlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In 2019 Tracey published her poetry collection, Conventional Weapons (Victoria University Press), which closely observes the beauty and depravity of human nature. Her collection of short fiction Devil’s Trumpet (VUP, 2021) includes thirty-one exhilarating new stories. Novelist Andrew Miller, judge for the 2014 UK Bridport Prize, praised her skill at ‘the difficult art of selecting the telling moment, the detail that speaks,’ and her ‘determination to find what is luminous in what is plain’.

Tracey’s accolades include the international Bridport Prize (2014), BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards (2004 and 2001), the international Fish Short Story Prize (2020), Manchester Poetry Prize (2023) and the Calibre Essay Prize (2024). In 2015 she won the Landfall Essay Competition, and was the recipient of the 2010 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. Her stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Star Times Short Story Award three times (2002, 2006 and 2011), and she was a winner of the NZ Book Month Award Six Pack Two (2007). In 2023 Tracey was awarded the Manchester Fiction Prize for an unpublished portfolio of poems titled opioid sonatas. In 2024 she won the Calibre Prize for her essay ‘why your hair is long & your stories short’ and the Moth Short Story Prize for her story ‘reasons to end us (an aerial view)’.

Tracey teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ. She now lives in Cambridge with her partner and teenage sons.

Her most recent work the girls in the red house are singing (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024) is a powerful new collection of poems that begins with opioid sonatas, the sequence that won the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023 and was longlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

 

Links

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

New Zealand Society of Authors writer page

Victoria University Press author page

ANZRB review of the girls in the red house are singing (Aug, 2024)

Youtube video of Tracey reading from the Moth Prize winning story ‘reasons to end us (an aerial view)’ (Aug, 2024)

Radio New Zealand review of Devil’s Trumpet (April, 2021)

The Spinoff Review on Devil’s Trumpet: ‘The Sexiest Lines from NZ’s Sexiest New Book’(April, 2021)

NZ Listener review of deleted scenes for lovers (June, 2016)

Radio New Zealand interview (May, 2016)