She attended McLaren High School in Callander (Perthshire) and then the University of Edinburgh, where she gained a master's degree in Social Anthropology.
In 2006 her short story Skin And Bones was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, performed by the actress Laura Fraser.
This novel combined her interest in personal fabrications with wider social memes such as terrorism, and specifically with the construction of potentially false narratives around terrifying events (see Aesthetica interview).
The political emphasis in Cooke's work continued in 2009 with the performance of her first dramatic monologue, Protective Measures, at the Kikinda Short Story Festival in Serbia.
Critics have drawn parallels between Cooke's work and that of Virginia Woolf (Scottish Review of Books, 2008) and of contemporary screenwriters such as Thomas Vinterberg (Manchester Evening News, 2004).