Caroline Eaton Tracey, writer
Photo by Andrew Emery Brown
Originally from Colorado, Caroline holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a recipient of the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing, the Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights, a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, among other honors. In 2025 she received the inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize for writing about the Southwest. She has also taught writing as a visiting professor at Deep Springs College.
As a journalist and critic, Caroline’s work focuses on the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. Her reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos. Her literary and art criticism appears in the Nation, the New Republic, and elsewhere, and has been commissioned by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art. Read more here.
Caroline lives with her wife, Mexican architect Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Sign up for her newsletter here.
Salt Lakes:
An Unnatural History
In this dazzling love letter to strange and delicate waters and a moving odyssey into her own identity, Caroline Tracey takes readers across the American West and to Mexico, Argentina, and Kazakhstan to document salt lakes, their loss, and the efforts underway to save them. She explores how the lakes have reflected the fast–changing natural world through Mormon diaries, Soviet realist novels, and Australian Aboriginal paintings. And she unravels the lakes’ lessons for her own life as she finds queer love and a sense of home in an imperfect world.
An unforgettable coming–of–age story and an exquisite work of nature writing, Salt Lakes is a moving call to fight for all that is fragile in our lives.
Praise for Salt Lakes
― Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings
"Salt Lakes is not just a book of nature writing, not just a memoir, but like the salt lakes themselves, something much more wondrous and precious. Caroline Tracey leads readers through her growing understanding of herself and the strange beauty of the ecosystems around her, and along the way reminds us of the abundance and possibilities inherent in queer lives and landscapes."
― Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth
"In Salt Lakes, Caroline Tracey shows us the beauty, vitality, and necessity of landscapes both strange and familiar. This is nature writing as it should be."
― Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts
Upcoming Events
November 3, 2025
Albuquerque, NM
University of New Mexico
Inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize Lecture
Caroline is currently scheduling events for her spring/summer 2026 book tour. If you are a bookstore, university, environmental organization, book club, or other institution, please reach out!
Get in Touch!
Book events: Caroline is available for author events during spring and summer 2026.
Workshops and lectures: She is available for speaking engagements, workshops, and class visits on topics including water, environmental issues in the Western US and US-Mexico borderlands, environmental and science writing, and researched memoir/“hybrid” writing.
Editing: Caroline works with creative and scholarly writers on many types and levels of manuscript development. Email her to learn more.
For Salt Lakes-related author events, please contact publicist Gabby Nugent: gnugent at wwnorton dot com
For literary rights and other related inquires, contact Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management: bmatzie at aevitascreative dot com
For speaking engagements, editing inquiries, and to drop Caroline a line directly: caroline dot e dot tracey at gmail dot com