Sue Thomas
Image manipulation by Christy Sheffield Sanford

1995
When I began this project it was purely a selfish thing. Isolated in my own creative sphere of writing non-science fiction fiction about technology I desperately wanted to make contact with others working in the same area. The question "Is there anybody out there?" has often been the impetus for new explorations and discoveries, and so it was with trAce. In 1995 I was Course Leader of the new Master's Degree in Writing at The Nottingham Trent University, so I spent plenty of time with writers, but those working in my own special field were hard to find. However, the size and scope of the web indicated that this might be where I might finally find my own personal creative community, and so I began to explore it in search of resources, first for myself, and then for everyone else. But even in those early days it was a huge task and so I was delighted when The English & Media Studies Department supported the idea and provided funding for what was at first called the 'Cyberwriting Project'. This meant that I could employ Simon Mills, at that time a student on the MA, to spend his summer vacation online trawling the net for links. He surfed through hundreds of sites, sorted the best of them into categories, and wrote a short review of each. That October he collated his results and photocopied them in booklet format for internal distribution to writing students and faculty. What had begun as a personal quest had grown into a very promising research project.

1996
After the success of the Cyberwriting booklet, Simon taught himself HTML and put his collection of data online. At that point we spent a lot of time discussing what the new website should be called. 'Cyberwriting' seemed very passe and we wanted a more notable name - but what? After much scouring of dictionaries and emailing back and forth, the word 'trAce' appeared and immediately it seemed the perfect choice. But we did not expect it would prove to be such a puzzle to so many people. We're often asked 'Is it an acronym? A specialist computer term?' Indeed, 'trace' is a common function on the web (see our Millennium trAceroute project, for example) but that is not the source of our name. In fact, no-one has ever guessed where it really came from. The first trAce website was launched at the Virtual Futures Conference at Warwick University in May 1996, and many people still remember its famous spinning gif. Much expanded and updated over the last four years, and now renamed to trAced, the original resource still continues under the care of Andy Oldfield.

1997
Less than two years after its paper beginnings trAce had established itself as the prime focus for online writing in the UK - at least, that is, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Because whilst we were in frequent contact with writers and online organisations in Australia, the US, and a number of European countries, in England the site was scarcely known. There are many reasons why the UK has been slow to come to the internet. The cost of access and hardware has played a large part, and there are historical and cultural reasons for why the literary community feels itself at odds with technology. But suffice it to say that beyond London and a few northern outposts, the UK artsworld was largely, and proudly, offline. However, it couldn't stay that way forever, and in August 1997 the Literature Department of the Arts Council of England showed its faith in new media by awarding trAce one of the largest single grants from its lottery-funded Arts for Everyone Scheme. The money would support the creation of an online community where writers from the UK, and most especially from the East Midlands region, could meet, work and learn with others around the world. It would provide training and advice, access points for those who could not afford to be online at home, and promote the skills of writing for this new medium. By the end of 1997 the beginnings of the site were visible and the organisation had begun to expand and grow. We had launched frAme, the trAce Journal of Culture and Technology, and were already hosting our first virtual collaboration: Deep Immersion, teaming Australian author Terri-ann White with poets Liz Yorke in the UK and Gillie Griffin in Canada, and funded by The Australian Network for Art and Technology.

1998
A year of planting and cultivation. Our membership list grew steadily, both internationally and at home. We ran free training workshops for authors in our region, teaching everything from the basics of web-surfing to building a website. Especially fruitful was 'Wired in a Week', when we selected five local writers and taught them whatever they needed to know in an intensive week of hands-on practice. We launched the trAce/Alt-X International Hypertext Competition and in September the Noon Quilt site opened for contributions. In October we held the first trAce International Conference on Writing and the Internet. It was a one-day event with guest speakers Dale Spender, Mark Amerika, Cynthia Haynes, Jan Rune Holmevik, Liz Bailey, Keith Brooke, Molly Brown, Peter Howard and Heather Rosenblatt. For a summary and pictures of the 1998 conference click here. That Christmas we gave away a highly unusual present, the program code for the Noon Quilt, so anyone can now create their own quilt using this shareware zip file downloadable from the site.

1999
Blooming flowers and ripening fruit. Christy Sheffield Sanford was appointed our first Virtual Writer-in-Residence, to be followed by Alan Sondheim in September. We selected Bernard Cohen as our 'flesh' Writer-in-Residence and made preparations to welcome him in Nottingham that June. The winners of the first trAce/Alt-X International Hypertext Competition were announced. trAce appeared at venues in Holland, the UK, and America. By then, the organisation had become so well-known that it often needed no introduction. We appeared on TV and radio and continued to be well-reviewed in the UK, USA, and Australia. Kids on the Net, originally intended to be a small site, grew hungrily and received extra sponsorship funding from Experian. The Kids' site Monster Motel was a huge success with over 600 monsters written by children all over the world. In August the Eclipse Quilt attracted our highest number of hits ever - 27,000 in 24 hours - as writers recorded their eclipse impressions and others came to view them. By invitation, we worked with various organisations including The Poetry Society, The ICA, DA2 Digital Arts Agency, the NOW Festival and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. At Cheltenham we logged onto the website of our collaborators at LinguaMOO and, while trAce members in the UK, Texas, and Norway waited with bated breath, we guided the celebrated author William Gibson into the trAce meeting room and helped him create a virtual suitcase which remains there to this day, safely preserved in cyberspace. But we ended the year, and the century, with a return to old media. The Noon Quilt, so successful as a website, became a pocket-sized book too. So the circle turns.

2000
The last year of the original project, and trAce is consolidating and expanding. Virtual Writer-in-Residence Alan Sondheim was with us as we tip-toed across the sleeping monster of Y2K, and Alan McDonald will take us through the first virtual residency of the new millennium. I am speaking at the Adelaide Festival about the New People we all have become, and Helen Whitehead takes Kids on the Net to teachers in America. But in July the gathering is back in Nottingham to celebrate the culmination of five years of work, community and creativity. Most of all, however, we come together to do what trAce has always done and will continue to do: talk, share, inspire and debate. And the topic is always the same: the making of literature.

2001 and onwards
We will continue to provide a platform for new work and a place for writers to meet and talk, but we will also be extending our interests towards the recording and preserving of online writing as well as offering consultancy services to organisations wishing to establish net-based writing projects. In addition, an exciting new venture in online teaching will be announced soon. We intend that trAce will continue to play a significant role in the development and support of new online literary media, both in the UK and around the world, for many years to come.

It's a typo :) Sent in an email from Simon Mills to Sue Thomas some time during Spring 1996
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Amongst them was Unholy Island, created in 1996/7 by Alan McDonald, now a trAce Virtual Writer-in-Residence.
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