Trace Ramsey is a recipient of the 2017-2018 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Award in Prose, the 2017 Profane Journal Nonfiction Prize, the 2016 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize from the North Carolina Literary Review, the 2015-2016 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Award in Literature, and was a 2015 contributor in non-fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Trace’s recent publications include spoken word, essays and poetry in Profane Journal, At Length Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, concīs, The Hellebore, North Carolina Literary Review, Rabid Oak, Anatolios Magazine and I Don’t Know How to Help You, a compilation zine from Pioneers Press. In 2014, Trace’s first book—an anthology of the zine Quitter (Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying)—was published by Pioneers Press. This was followed in 2017 by All I Want to Do is Live, also from Pioneers Press. In December 2014, Trace received a certificate in documentary arts in nonfiction writing from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Trace is currently writing a memoir-in-essays, Carrying Capacity, and a novel, The Ornithologists. Trace lives in Durham, NC and co-parents two children.


New from Trace Ramsey, All I Want to Do is Live.

“…this volume impresses with its fresh scrutiny of both inner and outer worlds.” Kirkus Reviews

“Ramsey’s highly original approach to memoir, and his willingness to take narrative risks and discard a linear approach to time, draws in readers and leaves a haunting impression.” BookLife

“With searing honesty Trace paints a kaleidoscope of his life that is almost reminiscent of Salinger’s ‘The Glass Family Chronology.'” Encore Magazine

“Ramsey helps us to see through his suffering eyes how depression, like raw, wild-eyed nature, looks, feels, and even smells like.” Compulsive Reader