Tracey Slaughter was born in Papatoetoe in 1972, and grew up on the Coromandel Peninsula. Her new short story collection, deleted scenes for lovers, published through Victoria University Press in 2016, has been acclaimed by reviewers as “note-perfect, plentiful, and pack[ing] an emotional punch that reverberates for days”(Spinoff) and “intoxicating…self-assured, forceful and filled with close observation”(Listener). 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 poetry and short fiction have been widely anthologised in New Zealand and received numerous awards. 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 numerous accolades include the international Bridport Prize (2014), and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards (2004 and 2001). In 2015 she won the Landfall Essay Competition, and she was the recipient of the 2010 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Star Times Short Story Award three times (2002, 2006 & 2011) and she was a winner of the NZ Book Month Award Six Pack Two (2007). In 2014 Tracey established the literary journal Mayhem, which features poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction from students, staff and alumni of Waikato University.  She now lives in Cambridge with her partner and teenage sons, and teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato.

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