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I am hoping to take advantage of a new model of patronage and encourage subscriptions to my writing.

For $12 per year – Based on a unique writing prompt that you send me each month, you receive a 100 word written piece emailed to you. You also get access to a private blog for supporters.

For $27 per year – You get 100 words written to you each month, in the mail, based on a prompt that you send me each month. You also get a copy of Quitter #9 (two months after starting your subscription) and access to a private blog for supporters.

For $60 per year – You get 200 words written to you each month, in the mail, based on a prompt that you send me each month. You also get a copy of Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying (two months after starting your subscription) and access to a private blog for supporters.

For $120 per year – This is the big one, the support level that means you believe in the potential of my writing and are willing to really get behind it. You receive every zine I release as soon as it is finished, 400 words written to you each month, in the mail, based on a prompt that you send me each month. You also get copies of Lasterday #1 through #4, Quitters Good Luck Not Dying through #9 (two months after starting your subscription) and access to a private blog for supporters PLUS access to audio recordings of each reading I do (at bookstores, info-shops, house shows, sitting in my family room talking to myself). If there is another project I take on, you get access to it. This is a subscription to my creative kinetic energy.

From my new Patreon page:

For the past ten years, I have written a zine named Quitter, a quarter page, self-published and mostly self-distributed work of creative non-fiction. Each issue is based on several “memoir vignettes” that expand around a theme. The current issue (Quitter #9) consists of two stories about breaking up. The first is about the divorce of my parents and the second about a severed land deed.

I am currently working on a memoir, Carrying Capacity. Carrying Capacity is a book of essays about ancestral lore, recovery from depression and substance abuse, and the disintegration of generational memory in the absence of physical evidence. What I intend to say with this book is that all of our personal histories are largely mythologies built more upon omission than anything else.

I was awarded a 2015 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Award in Literature from the Durham Arts Council. This financial award will be used for a reading tour of North Carolina. In December of 2014 I received my Certificate in Documentary Arts in Non-fiction Writing from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, a culmination of three years of work.

I write about personal mythology, the histories we create from our own background that are true to us but maybe not to others, and I want to share this with as many people as I can.

Praise for Trace’s writing:

“The new issue of Quitter [#9] is a quiet, deep-moving river of personal history, ideas, and true things told in a way that feels right and grounded. Trace’s best work yet shows him moving through time–boyhood to youth, pre-memory to adulthood. We find ourselves in horse pastures and wintery fields, anarchist farms and downtown coffeehouses. Outstandingly well-written, all of it. As his work continues to get better each issue, we stand solid in our belief that Trace Ramsey is a major talent destined to write things that last.”

“Trace Ramsey’s new zine series, Lasterday, is a graceful, deliberate, engaging piece of American storytelling. Over the course of these four minis, Trace writes about cabin life and depressive episodes, the lying inherent in stories and lost things that are not truly lost. Beautifully written and presented (each zine folds out into a poster), these tiny documents are something you’ll keep in your stacks forever. Recommended for fans of Joan Didion, Juliet Escoria, Harper Lee, and Thomas Wolfe.”

“Quitter #7 is a hard and devastating piece of personal American history. Through abuse and poverty, blood and snow, we see Quitter author Trace Ramsey giving us something true and painful and beautifully-told. A Pioneers Press favorite, we look forward to future work from Ramsey, a great and powerful new voice in American writing. We can’t vouch enough for this. Buy this zine. It’s well worth your time. One of the best zines of the year, hands down.”

“Quitter #8 is a quiet, elegant look at passing storms and coming sadness. In a lean and beautifully-written voice akin to Willa Cather (but all his own), Trace Ramsey shows us a tangled kind of life–deep-burrowed hurt, love and belief in (and need for) good creatures, a tinge of wildness in city blocks. A zine about depression and children and childhood and dreams, the eighth issue of Quitter (though brief) is one of the most substantial pieces of literary work in the Pioneers Press catalog.”

Pioneers Press has the full set of Quitter zines. The recently published Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying as well as individual issues of #7 and the brand new Quitter #8. A button and a sticker are included.

Quitter #8 is a quiet, elegant look at passing storms and coming sadness. In a lean and beautifully-written voice akin to Willa Cather (but all his own), Trace Ramsey shows us a tangled kind of life–deep-burrowed hurt, love and belief in (and need for) good creatures, a tinge of wildness in city blocks. A zine about depression and children and childhood and dreams, the eighth issue of Quitter (though brief) is one of the most substantial pieces of literary work in the Pioneers Press catalog. It’s sweet, sad, good-hearted, and smart. We are honored to carry this zine.