This is Zoë Strachan (see image above).
We are thrilled that she is going to be a panellist at Write Now 2012. So thrilled that I thought I would tell you a bit about her. I was even more thrilled to discover that she has a perfectly readable bio, and there is very little for me to actually DO, other than cut and paste. I was also happy that she has a really nice headshot, as I am not feeling up to the challenge of Photoshopping anyone today. In all seriousness, I am looking forward to hearing people ask her lots of questions about whether or not it is really possible to teach creative writing.
On a sort of unrelated note: I am looking forward to talking to her about the University of Iowa, where she had a fellowship at the International Writing Program. I studied Speech Pathology and Audiology across the river, on the science ghetto part of the campus, looking longingly at the English building, wishing I had been less responsible and just done writing instead.
If you'd like to see Zoë, you can still register and get the early bird conference discount by booking via the University of Strathclyde online shop: http://onlineshop.strath.ac.uk/. Click on the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty link.
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Zoë Strachan is the author of three novels: Ever Fallen in Love (Sandstone Press, July 2011), Spin Cycle and Negative Space (Picador). The latter won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award. In 2003 The Independent on Sunday listed her in their top twenty novelists under 30, and the Scottish Review of Books selected her as one of their new generation of five young Scottish authors in 2011. Her short stories and essays have been included in numerous journals and anthologies, she contributes journalism to various newspapers and magazines and her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. She has received two writer’s bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council, a Hawthornden Fellowship and was UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland. In 2008 she was awarded a Hermann Kesten Stipendium and spent time in Nuremberg, and in 2009 she received a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship which took her to France to write. In 2011 she undertook a British Council visiting fellowship at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. In recent years she has become more interested in interdisciplinary projects, for example collaborating on the exhibition and publication ‘I throw my prayers into the sky’ (Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Germany) with visual artists Laura Murray and David Sherry and writer Louise Welsh. Recent works for theatre are ‘Panic Patterns’ (with Louise Welsh, Citizen’s Theatre and BBC Radio Scotland) and ‘Old Girls’ (which opened the 2009/10 season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Oran Mor in Glasgow). Her short opera Sublimation (with composer Nick Fells) toured Scotland in May 2010 with Scottish Opera before going to Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010. She has taught on the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Glasgow since 2003 and is currently working on a major new opera project for Scottish Opera for 2012. You can find out more at www.zoestrachan.com<http://www.zoestrachan.com>
Zoë Strachan is an award-winning novelist who also writes plays, libretti, short stories and essays. She was born in Kilmarnock in 1975. In 2003 The Independent on Sunday listed her in their top twenty novelists under 30, and the Scottish Review of Books selected her as one of their new generation of five young Scottish authors in 2011. She has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Hermann Kesten Stipendium and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Her latest novel is Ever Fallen in Love, has just been shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize, and in autumn 2011 she was British Council Writer in Residence on the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.www.zoestrachan.com<http://www.zoestrachan.com/>
One more thing: you can follow her on Twitter. She says that she is a bit scared, so play nice. Her handle is: @zoestrachan
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