Books of My Life by Zoe Strachan
As a child, novelist and journalist Zoe Strachan (MA 1996, MLitt 1999, PhD 2019) loved going to the library – “it was like a magical portal to infinite other worlds” – and says that reading was her greatest pleasure. She always wanted to create stories of her own, though becoming an archaeologist came a close second. Zoe is now Professor of Creative and Interdisciplinary Practice at UofG and says that one day she’d like to write an archaeology thriller to combine her two loves.
The book that makes me laugh or cry the most
One does both: ‘The Friend’ by Sigrid Nunez. The narrator has lost a friend by suicide, so it’s absolutely devastating. But there’s hope and there’s humour. She inherits his Great Dane, and her observations on her work as a teacher of creative writing are – well, recognisably close to the bone!
The book I come back to again and again
‘The Girls of Slender Means’ by Muriel Spark. The confidence of the opening line always draws me in: ‘Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions.’ And of course few of them were ‘more delightful, more ingenuous, more movingly lovely, and as it might happen, more savage than the girls of slender means.’ Each time I read it a phrase leaps out and enthrals me. I love Muriel Spark’s work (though I have to admit that I think I’d have been terrified to meet her!
The book that was my favourite as a child
As an only child I enjoyed books about other awkward only children – ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett was a favourite. And E Nesbit – bring on the amulets and the Psammead and the slightly subversive undercurrents! I think her books might well be why I ended up studying archaeology.
The book that gets me through the hard times
I’m very fond of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. I wonder if you have to get into Tolkien when you’re a child for it to work as a comfort read, but I relax at the first mention of hairy-footed hobbits! The trilogy is big and immersive and has the advantage of being completely familiar. There’s something to be said for knowing that everything is going to work out in the end.
The book that changed my mind
Meena Kandaswamy’s ‘When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife’ is an absolutely searing exposition of an abusive marriage between a young writer and a supposedly progressive Marxist professor. Inspired by lived experience but definitely a novel, it’s incredibly vivid, smart and cautionary – a masterclass in what fiction can do.
The book I’m currently reading
‘The Assembly’ by Natasha Brown – a very welcome recommendation from one of my students (which is one of the nicest things about teaching Creative Writing). It’s so short and sharp. I really like the way the style is rich with detail and completely incisive at the same time.
The fictional character I’d love to meet
I don’t think she’d like to meet me as she believes that the best conversations are with yourself, but I’d be intrigued to quietly hang out with Janina from ‘Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’ by Olga Tokarczuk – just to watch her go about her daily business.
The book I most often recommend to others
‘A Box of Matches’ by Nicholson Baker. Is it a plotless novel? Probably – though there are high stakes between a cat and a duck at one point! I love the way it values the ordinary and everyday, and in the process becomes a gorgeous meditation on the human condition. The voice is so likeable, and it’s very, very funny.
Zoe’s most recent novel is ‘Catch The Moments as They Fly’, set in her home town of Kilmarnock. This year she is co-writing a personal history of her local area in Glasgow with her partner, Louise Welsh (a previous Books of my Life author), to be called ‘A Very Quiet Street?’
This article was first published in April 2026.
Image: Chloe Huang
"The best piece of writing advice I’ve read is from ‘A Far Cry from Kensington’ by Muriel Spark – the suggestion that writers must acquire a cat. ‘The cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp ... with a serenity that passes all understanding ... The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.’ Of course, you can’t guarantee that the cat won’t start miaowing for Dreamies right at your moment of inspiration!”
“Writing ideas are everywhere! I believe that the everyday can be fascinating, the ordinary significant. I love photography as an art form and I’ve always been struck by László Moholy-Nagy's ideas of different kinds of seeing: ‘exact seeing,’ ‘slow seeing,’ ‘intensified seeing’ and so on. A lot of ideas come from paying attention.”