Tracey Herd was born in Scotland in 1968 and lives in Edinburgh. She studied at Dundee University, where she was Creative Writing Fellow in 1998-2001. In 1993 she won an Eric Gregory Award, and in 1995 a Scottish Arts Council Bursary.
In 1997 she took part in Bloodaxe’s New Blood tour of Britain, and in 1998 was the youngest poet in the British-Russian Poetry Festival organised by the British Council with Bloodaxe when she gave readings in Moscow and Ekaterinburg and her poems appeared on metro trains in Russian cities.
In 2000 she read her poems over the public address system in the winners enclosure at Musselburgh racecourse. In 2002 she collaborated on a short opera, Descent, with the composer Gordon McPherson for Paragon Ensemble which was performed at the Traverse Theatre in Glasgow. In 2004 she received a Creative Scotland Bursary. She was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Dundee University in 2009-11. She has also worked as a Royal Literary Fund Lector, participating in their Bridge Project.
Her four collections with Bloodaxe are: No Hiding Place (1996), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Dead Redhead (2001), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Not in This World (2015), a Poetry Book Society Choice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; and Mute (September 2025).
