2026 State of the Art Prize, Arizona

About Caroline Tracey

Tucson, AZ

Caroline Eaton Tracey is a writer whose work centers on the Southwestern US, Mexico, and the borderlands between the two. Her first book, Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, will be published by W.W. Norton in March 2026. Caroline’s work draws on an interdisciplinary educational background that includes a BA in Russian Literature, MS in Rangeland Ecology, and PhD in Geography. Her reporting appears in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, n+1, and in Spanish in Mexico City’s Nexos. Her literary and arts criticism appears in the Nation, The New Republic, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Burlington Contemporary, and the National Gallery of Art’s East-West Series. Caroline’s research and writing have been supported by a Fulbright fellowship and grants from the University of Colorado Center for Environmental Journalism, the American Council for Learned Societies, among others. She has received the Waterston Desert Writing Prize (2022), an Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights (2023), a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant (2023), an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writer’s Grant (2024), and the inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize for writing about the Southwest (2025). She lives with her wife, Mexican architect Mariana GJP, in Tucson, Arizona.

Caroline Eaton Tracey is a writer whose work centers on the Southwestern US, Mexico, and the borderlands between the two. Her first book, Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, will be published by W.W. Norton in March 2026. Caroline’s work draws on an interdisciplinary educational background that includes a BA in Russian Literature, MS in Rangeland Ecology, and PhD in Geography. Her reporting appears in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, n+1, and in Spanish in Mexico City’s Nexos. Her literary and arts criticism appears in the Nation, The New Republic, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Burlington Contemporary, and the National Gallery of Art’s East-West Series. Caroline’s research and writing have been supported by a Fulbright fellowship and grants from the University of Colorado Center for Environmental Journalism, the American Council for Learned Societies, among others. She has received the Waterston Desert Writing Prize (2022), an Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights (2023), a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant (2023), an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writer’s Grant (2024), and the inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize for writing about the Southwest (2025). She lives with her wife, Mexican architect Mariana GJP, in Tucson, Arizona.