Two UWS graduates have written a book about their time studying abroad in Scotland which is due to be published in March 2025.

Author Karen Spears Zacharias and poet E.J. Wade, both US citizens, met while studying at UWS Ayr Campus in 2022 and their new book called The Devil’s Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures is part travelogue, part memoir, part poetry, and in outlandish Scottish storytelling tradition, a wee bit of winging it.

Karen commented: “This book is a compilation of people we met and adventures we took while studying on the Ayr campus.

“We began work on this project as part of our coursework in Media Studies and we are very excited about the book.”

E.J. and Karen roamed from the depths of Finnich Glen to the outcroppings of Dunure Castle. Sometimes wishing they’d been raised by Buddhist Monks instead of by foul-mouthed chain-smoking Appalachian mothers, these two UWS students embraced the wandering spirits of their matriarchal ancestors and left no ScotRail ticket unused.

On the heels of a global pandemic, two post-menopausal Appalachian women, one black, one white, abandoned hearth, home, and spouses shrugging in dubious wonderment to live and study abroad together in a university flat along Scotland’s River Ayr.

In Glasgow’s Sloans Ballroom, as musicians reimagined the compositions of writer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho, they danced a cèilidh. Along Edinburgh’s High Street, Wade performed a salsa. Hiking past windsurfers and golfers, they went in search of fairies and unearthed magical moments. They snuzzled Highland coos in Stranraer and stood gap-mouthed before the Falkirk Kelpies. Somewhere along Scotland’s northernmost tip to its southernmost brigs, they forged a friendship that defies generations of racial animosity. At its heart, this collection is the rediscovery of friendships first formed through studying and mucking about.

E.J. Wade is an award-winning poet whose work has been published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Women Speak, Salvation South, and Callaloo Literary Journal. She holds an EdD in Disability and Equity in Education from National Louis University, an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University, and an MA in Creative Media Practice from University of the West of Scotland.

Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. She holds an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University and an MA in Creative Media Practice from University of the West of Scotland.  A Georgia native, she lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Learn more about her at www.karenzach.com

Karen’s last book No Perfect Mothers is an historical fiction account of Carrie Buck who grew up in 1920s Charlottesville, Virginia and was inspired, in part, from her time studying in Scotland.The Devil’s Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures is available for pre-order now via Amazon and is published by Mercer University Press.