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 was awarded the 2014-2015 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Award from the Durham Arts Council. In 2018, Trace was awarded a fellowship in prose from the North Carolina Arts Council. Trace is also a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Trace is currently writing a memoir-in-essays, Carrying Capacity, due out in 2026 from Bread and Roses Press and a novella with the working title, Stay With Me.
In 2023, Hello America Stereo Cassette released Trace’s spoken word (backed by original music and soundscapes) cassette Tendril.
In 2026, Hello America released Trace’s second cassette, Embrace the Ache.
Trace lives in Durham, NC and co-parents two children.
New from Trace Ramsey, Embrace the Ache
ABOUT: Embrace the Ache is a letter to a former and present self, a response to a life lived through the expected and unexpected silences. Sometimes a love note, sometimes an unpleasant reminder of what took place, all written in the margins of long walks and long gazes. This work is about crossed arms and nodding heads, extended hugs, damp eyes netted the color of burning rocket blasts; a break up and a healing, a call to continue falling in love time after time even as the world burns.
Previously from Trace Ramsey, Tendril
ABOUT Ambient, almost hidden soundscapes; twisting musical compositions; nature themed insights into parenting, trauma, and emotional associations of family, place, what it means to be apart from and a part of a memory at the same time. This is one person’s side of a complicated story. This is Trace Ramsey’s Tendril.
EXTENDED ABOUT On Friday our May (2023) release is out and we couldn’t be more proud of this one. Trace Ramsey’s audio book Tendril is beautiful, wise, aching, and dense with ideas, personal history, and relatable feeling. This will both rip you to pieces and make you feel okay about humanity. It’s a complicated ride and Trace makes it well worth your time.
The field recordings and music accompanying the tracks is glorious and spectral, sweet and gracefully noisy.
No exaggeration here–this is one of the best things our label has released. Tendril is an important work. Buy a tape. (And a tape player too. We have those as well.) Throw on some headphones. Zone out. Think. Get lost in the haze for a while.
We value the physical product and this needs to be heard over warm, natural analog. -Adam Gnade
Also 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
Available at these libraries.
Good Luck Not Dying:
“What do you do when you realize the whole system is chock full of faulty wiring and institutionalized myths? Do you stay behind that desk (whether metaphorical or literal) and burrow into the security of “living in the first world” or do you throw yourself into the wilds?
Sometimes it’s not so black and white, and sometimes “cutting ties” requires a privilege and skill-set we don’t have.
In this anthology of Quitter issues 1-6, we see Ramsey battling fear and freedom, history and an uncertain future. There are no hard and fast answers; nothing set in stone besides the guarantee of chaos and troubled waters ahead. Over the course of 64 pages, Trace struggles through life, winning and failing, looking for a better path but not always finding it.
A deeply honest narrative on struggling to break the binds that hold us down, Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying is a devastating, thrilling read; a beautifully written examination of the frustrations and pitfalls of life in the current age.” Review from Atomic Books.
“I wondered what a small book was doing in my zine pile, it seemed to break the rules a little until I researched the lineage. Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying is the compiled work of zine author Trace Ramsey. Trace wrote and compiled Quitter. A zine from way back in 2005, squeezing them altogether into this bound gem in 2008 and again in 2014. It is very much worth many editions until every lit fiend on the planet gets their peeps on a copy. This is raw thoughts from someone who sees through the smokes and mirrors. Each chapter is a short essay on what is happening in his world. Moments from his youth, lost moments, working for the man and the toll it zaps from your body and psyche. It runs in and out of socio-economic scenarios and the perceptions on the working class, his and what others see. It deals with those moments of poverty, desperation and why striving to be something that there are far too many of, is a waste of time. Trace is into quitting big time, but in so doing becomes a winner. There is a beautiful, witty level headiness that starts your motor with emphatic nods of knowing ‘Yes, we are made for more than this…’ the future isn’t looking the brightest. (Reviewed by Abbie Foxton for Zine Nation)”
Out of print. A used copy can be found here.
An original, hand bound copy can be found here.
Available at these libraries.