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Tracy Ryan (1964 – )

Tracy Ryan was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1964. She attended Curtin University, and later the University of Western Australia, where she studied European languages. She has worked as a bookseller, university tutor, and in libraries. She has lived in the UK and in Ohio, USA, as well as Western Australia. She was Judith E. Wilson Junior Visiting Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge, in 1998, and subsequently taught Australian literature and film at the University of East Anglia. She is married to fellow poet John Kinsella, and has collaborated with him in various projects including the editing of Salt magazine and the development of the international publishing imprint Folio/Salt (now Salt Publishing). She was also editor of the Fremantle Arts Review from 1993 to 1996.

Ryan began publishing her poems in literary journals in the late 1980s. Her early poem sequence ‘Streams in the Desert’ was joint-winner of the Mattara poetry prize in 1987, and was published in the anthology Kiwi and Emu: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Australian and New Zealand Women (1989). Her first collection of poems, Killing Delilah, appeared in 1994, and she has since published eight further collections. Her collection The Willing Eye won the Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award in 1999. Ryan has also published three novels, Vamp: a novel (1997), Jazz Tango (2002), and Sweet (2008), and a collection of short stories, Conspiracies (2003).

Poetry Collections
  • Killing Delilah (South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 1994).
  • Intensities of Blue: poems ([Applecross, WA]: Folio, 1995).
  • Bluebeard in Drag: poems (South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 1996).
  • Lines of Sight (Cambridge, UK: Folio/Salt, 1997).
  • Ex Opere Operato (Newtown, NSW: Vagabond Press, 1999).
  • The Willing Eye: poems (South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 1999).
  • Hothouse (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2002).
  • Scar Revision (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2008).
Suggested Further Reading
  • Karen Attard, [untitled review of Bluebeard in Drag: poems], Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review no.1 (1997), pp. 19, 20. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/14234/20010621-0000/cordite.org.au/back-issues/cordite_01.pdf
  • Lucy Dougan, [review of Killing Delilah], Westerly 39.2 (1994), pp. 90–91. http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/setis/westerly/pdfs/411008
  • Dorothy Hewett, ‘The Sorrows of Women,’ Australian Book Review no.194 (1997), pp. 53–54.
  • Ivor Indyk, ‘Two From Fremantle,’ Australian Book Review no.209 (1999), pp. 33–34.
  • Julieanne Lamond, ‘Fear of the Dark,’ Southerly 62.3 (2002), pp. 200–210.
  • Peter Minter, ‘Create New Morphemes!’ Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review no.1 (1997), pp. 6, 8, 10, 14, 16. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/14234/20010621-0000/cordite.org.au/back-issues/cordite_01.pdf
  • Thomas Shapcott, ‘The Willing Eye,’ Meanjin 58.2 (1999), pp. 188–90.
  • Amanda Wilson, ‘Unfailingly Precise,’ Australian Book Review no.159 (1994), pp. 42–43.
  • Debra Zott, [review of Hothouse], JAS Review of Books no.14 (2003). http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/24605/20030417-0000/www.api-network.com/cgi-bin/reviews/jrbview0c7a.html?n=1863683518&issue=14