Ms Zoe Strachan
- Reader in Creative Writing (English Literature)
telephone:
01413306848
email:
Zoe.Strachan@glasgow.ac.uk
R306, Level 3, 5 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QH
Research interests
Biography
Novels are my first love but I write across various genres including short stories, essays, plays and libretti for opera. I enjoy collaboration across disciplines, and am currently developing my work in new music and sound art.
Research areas that particularly appeal to me include LGBTQI+ writing, Scottish Literature, feminism, arts-based methodologies and interdisciplinary experiments. I am a member of the Sustainable Futures in Africa Network.
In 2017 I worked on Home Ground, the cultural legacy of the Homeless World Cup in Glasgow, and in 2014 I curated a new anthology of LGBT writing from Scotland, Out There – the first of its kind in over a decade. Between 2011 and 2014 I co-edited New Writing Scotland, and in 2012 I co-selected the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems.
I was one of the judges for the 2020 Dublin International Literary Award.
Current projects
- PI British Academy Writing Workshops 2021: The Art of Transdiscplinary Research Communications; Sustainable Futures in Writing
- Co-I AHRC-GCRF Urgency Grant: Whose Crisis? The Global COVID-19 Crisis from the Perspective of Communities in Africa
- Co-I GCRF Challenge Cluster: Participatory Futures
- Consultant to Historic Environment Scotland's creative strand of Antonine Wall: Frontiers of the Roman Empire
- In development: A Very Quiet Street? an intersectional cultural history
(Profile picture by Ajamu)
Publications
Selected publications
Fells, N. and Strachan, Z. (2015) Negative Spaces. [Compositions]
Strachan, Z. (2004) Spin cycle. Picador. ISBN 9780330486316
Strachan, Z. (2011) Ever Fallen in Love. Sandstone Press: Dingwall. ISBN 9781905207732
Strachan, Z. and Armstrong, C. (2012) The Lady from the Sea. [Performance]
Strachan, Z. , Welsh, L. and Sherry, D. (2008) I Throw my Prayers into the Sky. [Exhibitions]
Strachan, Z. and Welsh, L. (2010) Panic Patterns. [Performance] (Unpublished)
Scrutton, N. and Strachan, Z. (2016) In transit. [Performance]
Strachan, Z. (2002) Negative Space. Picador. ISBN 0330485784
Strachan, Z. and Scrutton, N. (2017) Static Flux. [Performance]
Strachan, Z. (2017) Tiny jubilations: using photography in fiction. C21 Literature, 5(2), 7. (doi: 10.16995/c21.25)
Strachan, Z. and Fells, N. (2010) Sublimation. [Performance]
All publications
Grants
Grants and fellowships
- 2021 PI British Academy Writing Workshops 2021: The Art of Transdisciplinary Research Communications; Sustainable Futures in Writing
- 2020 Co-I AHRC-GCRF Urgency Grant: Whose Crisis? The Global COVID-19 Crisis from the Perspective of Communities in Africa
- 2020 Co-I GCRF Challenge Cluster: Participatory Futures
- 2019 GKE Flexible Fund, Rediscovering the Antonine Wall
- 2018 PI on GCRF Capacity Building in Arts-based Methods in NCD Prevention
- 2019 Workshop for co-creation of A Critical Resource for Ethical International Partnerships
- 2017 Co-I on AHRC-MRC Culture & Bodies NCD Prevention
- 2017 Co-I Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Grant (Workshop of Potential Scottish Literature)
- 2017 Being Human Festival, small grant
- 2017 Hawthornden Fellowship
- 2016 Scottish Writer’s Fellowship, Wallace Arts Centre/University of Otago, New Zealand
- 2015 Open Project Funding, Creative Scotland (for Writer in Residence, UofG and Glasgow School of Art)
- 2014 Cultural Commission, LGBT History Month Scotland (Out There anthology)
- 2014 Royal Society of Edinburgh Arts & Humanities Small Grant (Out There anthology)
- 2013 Scottish Literature Residency, Cove Park
- 2012 Visiting faculty, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
- 2012 Herald Angel Award, production of The Lady from the Sea
- 2012 Ever Fallen in Love shortlisted for Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year
- 2011 Ever Fallen in Love shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize
- 2011 Ever Fallen in Love nominated for the London Book Awards
- 2011 British Council UK Writers in Residence/Fellowship, International Writing Program, University of Iowa
- 2009 Robert Louis Stevenson Award, Residency at Hôtel Chevillon, Grez-sur-Loing, France
- 2008 Hermann Kesten Stipendium, international residency, Nuremberg, Germany
- 2006 UNESCO/Edinburgh City of Literature Writer in Residence, Museum of Scotland
- 2006 Writer's Bursary, Creative Scotland
- 2005 Residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, Toronto Island, Canada
- 2004 Hawthornden Fellowship
- 2003 Negative Space shortlisted for Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year Award
- 2003 Betty Trask Award, Negative Space
Selected invitations
I am a regular speaker at UK book festivals, most recently Edinburgh International Book Festival 2018, and have given keynotes at Creative Writing and Scottish Literature focussed conferences. International invitations include:
- 2019 European Night of Literature, Amsterdam
- 2019 British Council SPARKS Festival, Hong Kong
- 2018 2nd CounterText Conference, the Post-Literary, University of Malta
- 2016 Masterclass, International Institute of Modern Letters, University of Victoria, Wellington
- 2016 Wallace Arts Trust at the Pah Homestead, Auckland
- 2016 Masterclass, University of Auckland
- 2016 Masterclass, University of Otago
- 2016 Dunedin Readers & Writers Festival
- 2014 15th Annual Authors’ Month; tour of Central Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland)
- 2011 Prairie Lights, Iowa City
- 2011 International Festival of Authors, Toronto
- 2011 Bookworm International Literary Festival, Beijing
- 2010 Scottish delegate to International PEN Congress, Tokyo
- 2010 Bookworm International Literary Festival, Beijing and Chengdu
- 2007 International Prose Festival, Novi Sad
- 2005 British Council tour of Hungary
- 2003 Scottish Writers in New York, Bowery Poetry Club
Supervision
At present I am co-supervising practice as research doctoral and MFA projects in several areas, including:
- WW1 archives and fiction
- the ethics and potential of storytelling as an arts-based human and animal health intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa
- playwrighting and depictions of Chinese students in the UK
- creative responses to British migration to the Eastern Cape in the early 1900s
- Frankenstein, gender and created humans
- speculative fiction and variations in Scots
In addition I am lead supervisor on a SGSAH Creative Economies project investigating artist-centred approaches to the residency model.
Some researcher profiles can be found below.
- Gordon, Niamh
Narrating grief: trauma and the disruption of time and form. - Langley, Alice
A Chronological Exploration of Women Who Turn to Stone. - Mahar, Sundas
Environmental Literacies in Plastic Practices - Roe, Mimi
Korean Cultural Identity Formation and its Interaction...
Successfully completed practice as research doctorates:
’Madame Albertine is Gone’: The Epistemological Erotics of Embedded Surveillance, a critical and creative research project / Katy Hastie 2020
We make spaces and spaces make us: an exploration through creative writing of the relationship between literature and carceral spaces / Martin Cathcart Froden 2019
The Dragon in the Mirror, a novel, with Stepping Through the Mirror, a critical reflection on writing and revising a feminist portal-quest fantasy / Sarah Tytler 2019
Honest ink: Exploring the influence of inherited narratives on identity (re)construction / Victoria H. Shropshire 2019
De Volonté & the vampire bite: how Gothic vampire literature of the 19th century influences female members of the Goth subculture / Hayleigh Barclay 2019
Homeland variations: a response to the anxieties of self-identification in the context of displacement / Agata Maslowska 2019
How long the night, a novel : followed by an essay The ghosts of Muranów : confronting Poland's Jewish past / Izabela Ilowska 2016
Running on rooftops : a novel and critical reflection on writing from an identity of expatriation with an examination of West-meets-East encounters and attitudes depicted in literature / Andrea L. Stout 2016
The Encyclopaedia of Istanbul, a novel : &, Ottoman crossroads : coffeehouses, politics, theatres and storytelling, critical essays / Defne Cizakca 2015
A world of their own? : the novel and the total institution / Anne Hamilton 2015
Heaven's sense : a novel / by Kenneth Macleod, B.A., M.A. 2015
Teaching
I am PGR Convenor for Creative Writing, and the first point of contact for the MFA and DFA programmes. I contribute to the taught elements (workshops, Practice as Research seminars, Practical Pedagogy) of these programmes, as well as across the MLitt in Creative Writing (workshops, Craft & Experimentation, Editing & Publication) and to the Honours Fiction and Dissertation courses.
Research datasets
Additional information
I am a Non-Executive Director of Glasgow Women's Library and Patron of the Imprint Book Festival in East Ayrshire.