Jul 22

Jul 22 Tracie McBride

Author Tracie McBride

Biography

Born in a small logging town in New Zealand in 1968, Tracie McBride is a New Zealander of Maori and European descent who now lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children. An interest in speculative fiction began in her pre-school years – one of her earliest memories is of watching her favourite show, Doctor Who, on a black-and-white television at around the age of four – followed soon after with a passion for reading and writing. However, her writing career did not start in earnest until 2003 when she commenced study towards a Diploma in Creative Writing.

She sold her first short story in 2004 and continued the “write-submit-repeat” process, building up a body of work that earned her a Sir Julius Vogel Award (New Zealand’s national speculative fiction awards) for Best New Talent for 2007. Since moving to Australia she has also been shortlisted once for a Shadows Award (Australia’s national horror awards) and twice for an Aurealis Award (Australia’s national speculative fiction awards). Most of her work tends towards the darker end of the speculative fiction spectrum, with reviewers describing it as “schizophrenic dark fiction”, “disturbing, surreal, and otherworldly”, “imaginative and vivid and at times graphic and unnerving”, and “genuinely original and shocking”.

Tracie enjoys involvement in the horror writing community. She is an active member of the HWA, a member of the AHWA, has participated in various writers’ crit groups, and for several years has been an associate editor for the horror magazine Dark Moon Digest. She has helped to judge writing awards and was the vice-president of small horror press Dark Continents Publishing during its four years of operation. She takes particular pleasure in contributing to charity anthologies; she has stories in Bleed, Horror for Good, Shifters, and the forthcoming Refuge Collection.

Away from the keyboard, she is about as removed from the stereotype of a horror writer as it is possible to get. She works part-time as a primary school teacher aide, cooks with varying degrees of enthusiasm, drives Mum’s Taxi a lot for her children and their friends, and is the driving force behind the household fostering stray and abandoned dogs for a local dog rescue group. Previous employment has had her involved in selling a range of products, from steel to music to alcohol by party plan, and in hospitality management, going from running a beachside resort hotel to administering a spiritual retreat centre for a community of Franciscan friars.