Tracie is a Midwestern transplant to New York City, and the author of two books: The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America (Henry Holt & Co, 2024) and the New York Times bestseller, The American Way of Eating (Scribner, 2012), which won the Books for a Better Life Award and the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. A onetime target of Rush Limbaugh, McMillan also oversees national coverage of worker organizing for Capital & Main.

Tracie has received fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, MacDowell, and the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows at the University of Michigan. Her essays and journalism have been published in the New York Times, Mother Jones, Harper's, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, and elsewhere. She is a two-time finalist for a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a Livingston Award Finalist, and the winner of the Harry Chapin Media Award, the James Aronson Prize for Social Justice Journalism, and a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award.