Writers in Conversation #1 with Tracey Holmes (Catch up Online)
The Institute for Australian and Asian Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University is delighted to open the 2026 IAC Writers in Conversation series with acclaimed journalist and author Tracey Holmes. Presented in partnership with the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University, this conversation invites you into candid, engaging, and insightful dialogue.
About the Speaker
Tracey Holmes is one of Australia’s most recognised broadcasters, with a career spanning nearly 40 years across radio, television, and digital media. She is internationally respected for her work exploring the intersection of sport, politics, culture, and society on a global stage, and has built a strong reputation for rigorous reporting on the political, economic, and ethical dimensions of global sport.
Tracey has covered 14 Olympic Games, as well as multiple FIFA Men’s and Women’s World Cups, and major national sporting events. Her work has taken her around the world, offering in-depth analysis of how global sporting bodies operate and how major events intersect with geopolitics. Through her reporting and long-form interviews, she has brought athletes from diverse backgrounds and nations to audiences worldwide.
Tracey began her journalism career in 1989 as a traineeship at the ABC. She later became Australia’s first female presenter of a national sports program—the ABC flagship Grandstand—and pioneered coverage of women in sport and reporting by women in sport. Tracey went on to live and work as a journalist and broadcaster in Hong Kong, Beijing, and the Middle East for more than a decade. She rejoined the ABC in 2014. The Ticket, which she hosted and produced, focused on sports policy, governance, and integrity, and won numerous awards, including Sport Australia’s Best Coverage of the Business of Sport and recognition from the International Sports Press Association. She currently hosts The Sports Ambassador weekly podcast, exploring the stories behind the headlines. Her reporting has consistently gone beyond scores and results, examining issues such as corruption, doping, athlete welfare, and the influence of politics and money in sport.
Tracey has twice won the prestigious International Sports Press Association (AIPS) gold award and is a recipient of the IOC Women and Sport Award and Sport Australia’s Lifetime Achievement Award. As an educator and mentor, she has taught at UTS, Macleay College, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and the IOC Young Reporters Program. She is a member of the IOC Press Committee, a council member of Indigenous Football Australia, and deputy chair of the Oceania Australia Foundation. Tracey holds a Master’s degree in Communications and is currently studying a Master’s in International Sports Diplomacy.
About The Eye of the Dragonfly
“The best moments in sport have the power to take us to someplace else, touching something deep within us along the way. These are the moments that force us to confront a bigger world, our place in it, and to contemplate what is truly significant.”
In 2025 Tracey Holmes published her memoir in which she reflects on her life in sports journalism while examining the deeper forces shaping global sport. As Tracey says, this is not a book about sport; it is a book that uses sport as a lens through which we can interrogate the best and worst of us, because sport is a most powerful international language that is capable of breaking down barriers. Drawing on almost four decades of experience, Tracey uses sport to explore broader human and societal issues. Using the imagery of the eye of the dragonfly which sees in 360-degree perspective, Tracey takes us beyond the plays and statistics to the real stories of sport – the stories of human beings in exultation and defeat and the bigger stories of money, power structures, cultural dynamics, and all too often, discrimination.
Tracey has also had a rich personal story. As the child of itinerant surfers who had lived in South Africa and Hawaii, she herself has lived in many different countries with her children and husband, Stan Grant, seeing the world from many different perspectives. Only after numerous years living in China did she learn that her great-great grandfather was a Chinese doctor from Fujian province, China, who migrated to Australia in the 1850s.
Bracing, intimate and characteristically unconventional, The Eye of the Dragonfly gives us the full picture of a remarkable life in sport.