“He drinks his espresso coffee made in a little Italian percolator and seeks out controversial or banned books on the premise that if a book is banned, it is probably interesting”
In February 2016 I received an email from Tracy Sorensen a film maker, activist, artist and writer who had been urged to contact me by another author. The manuscript Tracy shared with me was The Lucky Galah and I’ll be forever grateful.
It is set in the coastal WA town of Port Badminton — a fictional version of the Carnarvon where Tracy grew up — and weaves in issues of parochial ignorance, racism, sexism, and politics.
In 1969 Port Badminton is poised to play its part in the Moon Landing. An influx of expat NASA employees working at the tracking station on the sand dune just out of town shakes things up. The story is told by a pink and grey galah who is shredding her way through an old copy of Donald Horne’s Lucky Country picked up by her owner at the local book exchange.
I will never forget the shiver of excitement I felt when reading The Lucky Galah for the first time. It’s one of those moments where I can recall exactly where I was, and how I felt. The technical publishing term I like to use for this experience is ‘the tingles’.
Publishers felt the same way and soon Lucky was enjoying overtures from four major publishers all of whom fell in love with Lucky. Geordie Williamson, the Picador publisher at Pan Macmillan, was the first to call to admit he was “smitten” by Lucky. Geordie became Tracy’s publisher and has continued to be a wonderful champion of her work.
The Lucky Galah was published in early 2018 and went on to be short-listed or long-listed for several awards, including the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, and The Russell Prize for humour writing.
Charlotte Wood who mentored Tracy during the writing of The Lucky Galah wrote;“Tracy Sorenson works with the observant, rueful eye of the true artist and renders what she sees with a rich and sparkling sense of humour. The Lucky Galah is a fresh and surprising novel – thoroughly Australian, joyful and magnificently original.”
Tracy was passionate about elevating handicrafts to their rightful place as a potent symbol of women’s resistance and activism, and in what began as a creative challenge while undergoing treatment for peritoneal cancer, Tracy crocheted a cosy, colourful, and arresting “knitted narrative” of her internal organs. That project eventually led to her startlingly original work of speculative non fiction, The Vitals (Picador 2023). An originally whimsical cancer memoir narrated from the perspective of various characters including Ute, a wandering womb; Liv, a workaholic liver; and my favourite, Rage, an existential spleen. But there is also Baby, an ever-growing tumour, and Baby’s child Bunny, whose cells are multiplying alarmingly.
Bunny’s metaphorical metastasizing is both an allegory for climate catastrophe, a trophic cascade caused by destructive, ever-multiplying vermin, and the fight for homeostasis … and Tracy’s survival.
Tracy will be remembered for her remarkable zest, creativity, activism, intelligence, wit, and generosity – we’re bereft without her.
—Jacinta di Mase
Literary Agent
