About TRACY
Causes. Culture. Community.
Tracy Chiles McGhee is a dedicated advocate for storytelling, cultural preservation, and social impact. Through her work in publishing, the arts, and humanities, she fosters spaces for creative expression, literacy development, and community engagement. As a writer, mentor, and curator, she amplifies marginalized voices and drives meaning
Tracy Chiles McGhee is a dedicated advocate for storytelling, cultural preservation, and social impact. Through her work in publishing, the arts, and humanities, she fosters spaces for creative expression, literacy development, and community engagement. As a writer, mentor, and curator, she amplifies marginalized voices and drives meaningful change through literature, advocacy, and education.
Honors, Leadership, & Affiliations
- 2025 HumanitiesDC Community Culture & Heritage Grant Award Recipient
- FY2025 Arts & Humanities Fellow, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
- Organizing Host, The Wings Collective
- Chapter Lead (Publishing), Unlock Her Potential
- Advisory Committee, the 2025 Inaugural Zora Neale Hurston Summit hosted by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust at Barnard College
- 2024 Inaugural Literature Fellow; 2024 Independent Practitioner Fellow: HumanitiesDC
- 2024 Inaugural Artist-in-Residence. The Last Resort Artist Retreat
- Social Entrepreneurship: Founder/CEO, My Published Book
- Constituency Engagement Manager for Unerased: Black Women Speak & Curator of Unerased: Amplified YouTube series
- Programming Consultant: Zora's Den: A Sisterhood of Writers
- Literacy Development: International Board Member: Celebrate Maya! Project; Co-Founder, along with author Kwame Alexander, of LEAP for Ghana, a literacy development initiative
- Participating author in the Pen/Faulkner's Writers in Schools Program
- Mentorship: Developed and launched one-on -one Mentorship Program for the nonprofit ScholarCHIPS, which provides scholarships and support to children of incarcerated parents
- Preservation of African American History: Ambassador for the National Museum of African American History & Culture
- Social Good Advocacy: Former Public Interest & Disability Rights Lawyer who worked for organizations that provide free legal services for the indigent and marginalized
- Speaker, Podcast Guest, Workshop Presenter, & Panelist (DC Public Library, Writing Immersions and Retreats, Community Events, Literary Festivals)
LITERARY BIO
Tracy Chiles McGhee is an award-winning, multi-genre writer and the author of the acclaimed novel Melting the Blues. McGhee received six awards for the novel, among them the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards) Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction (South), the Honor Book (Fiction) at the Black Caucus of the American Library Assoc
Tracy Chiles McGhee is an award-winning, multi-genre writer and the author of the acclaimed novel Melting the Blues. McGhee received six awards for the novel, among them the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards) Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction (South), the Honor Book (Fiction) at the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) Self-Publishing Literary Awards, and the Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award for First Fiction. She also received Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards (Mainstream Literary Fiction) and was a Finalist in the prestigious William Faulkner-William B. Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in the Novel-in-Progress Category.
Other awards include: The Reynolds Price Prize in Fiction (Finalist) for two short stories and The Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award (Honorable Mention) in the Salem College International Literary Awards.
Tracy enjoys writing about themes in which she is passionate like love, family, friends, and art in the broadest sense of the word. Her writing also centers on women and individuals of the Black Diaspora with the mission to inspire cultural remembrance, self-expression, and healing.
She has been published in a variety of publications such as Washington Informer, Blavity, Vistas Magazine, Word in Black, Atlanta Daily Word, Dallas Weekly, Seattle Medium, The Virginia Tribune, and the San Diego Voice and Blueprint (articles), The Fire Inside: Collected Stories & Poems From Zora’s Den, Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God: 51 Women Reveal the Power of Positive Female Connection, Word Nation: An Anthology edited by Marita Golden, Washington Writers' Publishing House, BOMB Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers, and Slow Trains Literary Journal.
Media appearances and/or mentions: SHOUTOUT LA, C-SPAN Book TV, PBS-Independent Lens, Oprah Daily Insider, Forbes, Parade, Washington Post, Washington Informer, Blavity, and NPR.
A graduate of Catholic University Law School and Georgetown University, Tracy lives in Washington, DC.