Zoe Pilger (; born 1984) is an English author and art critic. Her first novel, Eat My Heart Out, won a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award.
The child of investigative reporter John Pilger and journalist Yvonne Roberts, she worked as the art critic for The Independent between 2012 and 2016, a period that followed her receipt of the 2011 Frieze Writer's Prize for criticism. She is currently undertaking a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research focuses on romantic subjection and sadomasochistic themes in the work of French artist Sophie Calle. Her writing frequently engages with issues of contemporary romance, feminism, and power relations, often employing satire, as reflected in her novel's examination of modern relationships shaped by commodified intimacy.
The daughter of journalists John Pilger and Yvonne Roberts, Zoe Pilger studied social and political science at Cambridge University. She also gained an MA in Comparative Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Pilger was an art critic for The Independent, a British newspaper, from January 2012 to 2016. Her first novel, Eat My Heart Out, published by Serpent's Tail in 2014, has been described as a post-feminist satire about modern romance. It developed from an intensive writing period when the author was 23 and lived in an unfamiliar seaside town for six months.
She is currently researching her PhD on romantic love and sadomasochism in the work of female artists at Goldsmiths. Pilger lives in London.