Tracy Barrett

Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous books and magazine articles for young readers.

She holds a Bachelor's Degree with honors in Classics-Archaeology from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Italian Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly interests in the ancient and medieval worlds overlap in her fiction and nonfiction works.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study medieval women writers led to the writing of her award-winning young-adult novel, Anna of Byzantium. Her most recent publications are a middle-grade novel, On Etruscan Time (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, a sequel to Cold in Summer), and a nonfiction history for middle-schoolers, The Ancient Chinese World (Oxford University Press, with Terry Kleeman). She is currently working on The Case That Time Forgot (Book 3 of "The Sherlock Files"), a middle-grade medieval mystery, and a contemporary middle-grade novel.

Since 1999 Tracy Barrett has been Regional Advisor for the Midsouth (Tennessee and Kentucky) with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Tracy has taught courses on writing for children and on children's literature at various institutions and frequently makes presentations to groups of students, librarians, teachers, and others.

For an example of Tracy's presentations at writers' conferences, please see this article from Clarksville Online.

She teaches Italian, Women's Studies, and Humanities at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Click here for an article about her double life as professor and writer!

More about me
I often get letters asking for more information for school reports. Here is the biographical information that is most often requested:

I was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up mostly in New York state. I went to college in New England and graduate school in California.

The first book I ever read by myself was called Little Bobo and His Blue Jacket. I still have it. I learned to read when I was three, but I know now that this doesn't mean much. My brother didn't really read until he was seven, and now he reads more and remembers it better than I do.

My favorite books when I was growing up were Charlotte's Web; The Phantom Tollbooth; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; The Return of the Twelves; The Jungle Book; The Princess and the Goblin; Five Children and It; Mrs. Mike; Pippi Longstocking; Hitty, Her First Hundred Years; The Secret Garden; the first half of The Once and Future King; Emily of New Moon, poems by William Blake, Ogden Nash, and especially Don Marquis.

As I grew older, my favorites included Kristin Lavransdatter, the second half of The Once and Future King, A Death in the Family, anything by Charles Dickens, especially Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities, poems by John Donne, essays by E.B. White (the author of Charlotte's Web), and anything by Jane Austen, James Thurber, and George Eliot.

I have a husband, a 23-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old son, two Jack Russell terriers, and a cat.

I teach Italian and other subjects at Vanderbilt University and I like to travel, especially to Italy, and especially with my family. My other hobby is knitting (I made the sweater in the picture above). I used to skydive (that's how I met my husband—on the ground, not in the air!) but I haven't jumped out of an airplane in a long time.

If you have any questions that I haven't answered here or in the interview on the Writing page, you can write to me at TracyTBarrett@yahoo.com or at P.O. Box 120061, Nashville, TN 37212 (please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want a reply). I always answer my mail, but I won't do your homework, so please don't ask the theme of one of my books, or ask me to find similes and metaphors, or to tell you anything else that your teacher wants you to figure out on your own!