Zoë Strachan was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1975. She is the author of three novels: Ever Fallen in Love, Spin Cycle and Negative Space. Ever Fallen in Love was shortlisted for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards and the Green Carnation Prize and nominated for the London Book Awards. Negative Space 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 been UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland, a Hermann Kesten Stipendiaten, a Hawthornden Fellow, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow and in 2011 she undertook a British Council visiting fellowship at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. 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. The Lady from the Sea, a full-length opera composed by Craig Armstrong and based on the play by Ibsen, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012.