Jen's Party

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.Chitra Ramaswamy is a British journalist and author. Her books include Homelands: The History of a Friendship and Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy. She is currently a restaurant critic in Scotland.

'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'