| Tracy Quan | |
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| Born | USA |
| Occupation | Novelist, Columnist, Essayist |
| Period | 1999 - |
| Subjects | Sex work, Prostitution, Feminism, Pop culture, Politics, Relationships |
| Literary movement | Novel: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, Diary of a Married Call Girl |
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Influences
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www.tracyquan.net |
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Tracy Quan is an American writer and former prostitute. She is best known for her Nancy Chan novels. In addition, Quan writes a regular column for The Guardian website on pop culture, sex and politics and is involved in the prostitutes' rights movement.
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Tracy Quan was born in the Northeastern U.S., but grew up in Canada.[1] Her parents emigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad; she has spoken of Chinese, Indian, African, and Dutch ancestors.[2][3][4] Her parents divorced, and she credits her close relationship to her father to this experience.[5]
Tracy Quan read Xaviera Hollander's book The Happy Hooker when she was 10 years old and decided to be a prostitute. (Her prior aspiration, to be a librarian, was due to her image of librarians as independent, working women who got to collect money in the form of library fines.) By 19 she was supporting herself as a sex worker, working at an escort agency and a house before becoming an independent call girl with her own client list. As she told CANOE magazine in 2005, "I was never on the street. I've had a relatively easy time." Quan notes she spent 15 years as a working girl in London and Manhattan, although she juggled both writing and sex work for a few years.[1]
As a writer, Tracy Quan first made a splash with her Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl column in Salon.com. Combining sex with a twice-weekly serial, the semi-autobiographical column centered on Nancy as she juggles her 'straight' boyfriend and family with her clients and girlfriends' problems. The story continues in the novels. Tracy expresses the emotional aspects of her life experiences in her novels, her fiction writing, and keeps her journalism for professional commentary on topics of interest: the plight of sex trade workers, changing sexual mores, topical media frenzies on public personalities such as the Eliot Spitzer scandal.[6] Quan is currently a full-time writer, a columnist for The Guardian website and contributor to The Daily Beast.
Tracy Quan served as a spokeswoman for Prostitutes of New York, or PONY, a sex workers advocacy organization.[7] Quan has been described as a "libertarian entrepreneur", who advocates decriminalization of prostitution in the US.[3][8] At the same time, she does not encourage others to go into the business.[5]