Zoë Strachan

Zoë Strachan was born in Irvine and grew up in Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. She moved to Glasgow in 1992, where she began her studies at Glasgow University. She graduated in 1996 with an MA in Archaeology and Philosophy.

After university Strachan worked a range of jobs including telephone banking, call-centres, directory enquiries and dog walker, later enrolling on the Creative Writing course run by Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, from which she graduated with an M.Litt in 2000. Rachel Seiffert (The Dark Room) and Louise Welsh (The Cutting Room) also studied with her.

She was given a two-book advance by Picador and published her first novel, Negative Space, to much critical acclaim in 2002. The book was set in Orkney and her adopted city of Glasgow. Negative Space was nominated for the Saltire First Book of the Year, the SAC Book of the Year and won a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, Spin Cycle, was published in 2004, and the third, Ever Fallen in Love, in 2011.

She is a member of a group of young, female Glasgow writers known as the “Glasgow Girls”, comprising Strachan, Louise Welsh, Laura Marney and Anne Donovan. Strachan publishes short stories in anthologies and literary magazines here and abroad, has written extensive journalism and some essays and criticism, and has written drama, short stories and other pieces for radio. She has also been teaching on the Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow since 2003, with a sabbatical in 2006 which she spent in Bamberg and Berlin working on her next novel.

Strachan lives in Glasgow with her partner, the writer Louise Welsh.