Emma Strang

Em Strang is an award-winning poet and novelist, preoccupied with nature, spirituality (in particular, Christian mysticism) and the question of evil. Her first poetry collection, Bird-Woman (Shearsman, 2016), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Best First Collection prize and won the 2017 Saltire Poetry Book of the Year award. Her second collection, Horse-Man (Shearsman, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Best Second Collection prize. Her poetry explores the relationship between the human and non-human – what does it mean to exist alongside others? – and love as the ‘outbound movement that trains people to heal injustice and kindly embrace the world’ (Norman Wirzba, Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity, New York: HarperOne, 2016).

Her first novel, Quinn, was shortlisted for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel prize and was published by Oneworld in 2023. Whilst her poetry often focuses on themes of love, her fiction is an enquiry into evil, in particular acts of violence. Quinn was inspired by a decade of working with long-term prisoners in Scotland, trying to understand and come to terms with notions of justice and responsibility: does guilt begin and end with the perpetrator of a violent act or are we all in some way culpable?

As a young mother, Em spent six years in an eco-community in southwest Scotland, where she and her husband built a strawbale home. She has a PhD in ecological poetry from the University of Glasgow and now lives on the west coast of Scotland together with twenty-nine horses.