Bad Attitudes

Agnes Owens was always a writer, although for the majority of her life she was preoccupied with making a living and domesticity. She married twice, brought up seven children and variously worked as a typist, cleaner and factory worker. It wasn’t until she attended an evening creative writing course that she wrote her first novel Gentlemen of the West that was published in 1984 to widespread critical acclaim; she would go on to write a further six novellas including Like Birds in the Wilderness and A Working Mother. Her short stories were collected and published by Polygon. She died in 2014.Dr Jenni Fagan is an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter. After the publication of her debut novel, The Panopticon, Jenni was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. She has been on lists including the Desmond Elliott Prize, James Tait Black, Sunday Times Short Story Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. The Sunlight Pilgrims saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards. Her third novel Luckenbooth was praised in The New York Times Book Review, who named her The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins. In 2022, Polygon published her most recent novel, Hex, and The Bone Library, a poetry collection written during her time as a Writer in Residence at the Dick Vet Bone Library. In 2024, her memoir Ootlin is due to be published, as is her seventh poetry collection A Swan's Neck on the Butcher's Block. Fagan recently wrote two hundred poems for a collectors book called Heart of the Spirit, celebrating 200 years of The Macallan whisky.

'Agnes Owens is one of Scotland's finest writers, and it's to be hoped that a new readership is about to discover that for themselves'