Tracy Quan was born in the Northeastern U.S., but grew up in Canada. Her parents emigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad; she has spoken of Chinese, Indian, African, and Dutch ancestors. Her parents divorced, and she credits her close relationship to her father to this experience.

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.

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. 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. Quan has been described as a "libertarian entrepreneur", who advocates decriminalization of prostitution in the US. At the same time, she does not encourage others to go into the business.

Nancy Chan

• Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl ran in Salon.com from July 1999-January 2000 as a twice-weekly serial.
• Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl (2001) ISBN 978-0-609-60724-4. Despite name similarity, the events in this novel are set after the Salon series.
• Diary of a Married Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (2005) ISBN 978-1-4000-5354-4
• Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl (2008) ISBN 978-0-00-724938-1 An adventure in southern France involving the relics of Mary Magdalen

Other

• Orientalia: Sex in Asia (2003) (With photographer Reagan Louie.) ISBN 978-1-57687-186-7