Tutored Fiction Retreat: Novel Writing

Tutor: Zoë Strachan – Writer

Zoë Strachan is the author of four novels, most recently Catch The Moments as They Fly, which is currently longlisted for the Saltire Book of the Year Award 2024. Of her previous books, 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, and Negative Space won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award.

Works for theatre include Something in the Air and Panic Patterns (with Louise Welsh) and Old Girls (A Play, a Pie & a Pint). Her short opera Sublimation (with composer Nick Fells) toured Scotland with Scottish Opera before going to Cape Town, South Africa. The Lady from the Sea, a full-length opera composed by Craig Armstrong and based on the play by Ibsen, premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012, where it won a Herald Angel Award.

She has edited six anthologies of new writing and has been a judge for the Dublin International Literary Award (2020) and the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award (2021-2024).

Her long-standing sound art/experimental radio collaboration with composer Nichola Scrutton allows her to blend composed and found text into poetic forms through live, collaborative performance.

Between 2011 and 2014 she co-edited New Writing Scotland, Scotland’s principal forum for poetry and short fiction, and in 2014 she curated a new anthology of LGBT writing from Scotland, Out There (Freight) – the first of its kind in over a decade. In 2020, she was one of the judges for the Dublin International Literary Award.

Zoë has been UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland, a Hermann Kesten Stipendiaten, a Hawthornden Fellow, and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow. In 2011 she undertook a British Council visiting fellowship at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa and in 2012 she was visiting faculty at Dartmouth College. She is Professor of Creative and Interdisciplinary Practice at the University of Glasgow.

www.zoestrachan.com/ @zoestrachan

Photo: Ajamu

Guest, Wednesday evening: Louise Welsh – Writer

Louise Welsh is the author of eight novels including, The Cutting Room, Death is a Welcome Guest and No Dominion. She is the editor of Ghost, One Hundred Stories to Read with the Lights On (2016). Louise was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts by Edinburgh Napier University (2015) and was a University of Otago’s Scottish Writers Fellow at the Wallace Arts Centre in New Zealand (2016). She has presented over thirty BBC radio features and written many short stories and articles. Louise has written libretti for four operas including Scottish Opera’s production of Anthropocene (music by Stuart MacRae) which premiered in January 2019. She has also written for the stage. Her new play King Keich will premiered at Òran Mór in October, 2019.

Louise is co-director (with Jude Barber) of the Empire Café, an award winning collective exploring Scotland’s relationship with empire. (@theempirecafe) Louise is Professor of Creative Writing at University of Glasgow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Louise’s latest novel, To the Dogs, was published in January 2024.

@louisewelsh00

Photo: Julie Broadfoot

Fee includes all day and evening tutored workshop sessions, individual tutorials, tutor and guest readings, accommodation, inc. sheets and towels and all meals (not including alcohol).

Single – En-suite room £1,115
Single – Shared bathrooms £1,065
Shared Room (2 Beds) £1,015pp – single supplement £50

£200 deposit payable on booking by bank transfer, PayPal or cheque, to secure place. Balance due six weeks before the start of the course.

Please see Terms and Conditions.

Please arrive between 3:00pm and 4:30pm on Monday 14th July 2025

Tea, cake and housekeeping information 4.30pm

Introductory Workshop 5.30 – 6.30pm

Dinner 7.00pm

After breakfast, 10:00am on Saturday 19th July 2025