Agnes Owens: Out of the Margins
Agnes Owens (1926–2014) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 24 May. This short film presents Owens as a writer shaped by working-class life, whose fiction exposed power, resisted sentimentality, & centred overlooked voices.
A 🎂🧵
1/7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYRPGGto2Q
#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #AgnesOwens #workingclass #workingclasswriters
“Between her debut in 1984 – aged 58 – and her death in 2014, Owens published six short novels and two collections of stories. In contemporary reviews she was likened to Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge: her books thrive on the friction between comedy and sadness.”
—John Self on the working-class genius of Agnes Owens (1926–2014)
https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/the-working-class-genius-of-agnes-owens
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #workingclass #workingclassfiction #workingclasswriters
Robert Tannahill (1774–1810), “the weaver poet”, was born #OTD, 3 June – “second only to Robert Burns as a poet writing chiefly in the language of the working class of Scotland”
1/5
#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #19thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #workingclass
Archie Hind (1928–2008), author of THE DEAR GREEN PLACE, was born #OTD, 3 June
“The only other 20th-century novel I know that places a writer’s struggle in an equally well-imagined city is Nabokov’s THE GIFT”
—Alasdair Gray
1/4
https://www.scotswhayhae.com/post/with-hind-s-sight-a-review-of-archie-hind-s-the-dear-green-place
#Scottish #literature #novel #20thcentury #workingclass #Glasgow
Creativity, Community & Class with Kevin P. Gilday
The Creative Resistance Podcast talks to Glasgow poet, performer, & playwright Kevin P. Gilday about gatekeeping of working-class stories, the role of art as a tool for survival rather than a luxury, & Kevin’s groundbreaking community projects like The Bank of Springburn & the Care in Scotland installation
#Scottish #literature #poetry #drama #art #culture #workingclass #workingclasswriters #podcast
Starting 31 Aug, BBC Radio 4: A WORKING MOTHER, by Agnes Owens (1926–2014)
Ten years after WW2, our unreliable narrator Betty – arch, witty, clever – is married with children & feels trapped. While her husband, Adam, drinks and complains, Betty flirts with their best friend Brendan, tries to avoid the roving hands of her new employer, & plots her escape…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0030x97
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #AgnesOwens #workingclass #workingclasswriters #audiobooks
“Though her characters struggle, their hardship does not sanctify them. Theirs is not an ennobling suffering. ‘I don’t write about people that are nice people,’ Owens said. ‘They’ve got to be sinners, with a wee touch of goodness here and there, you know.’”
Roxani Krystalli on Agnes Owens, in GUTTER Magazine
https://www.guttermag.co.uk/reviews/a-wee-touch-of-goodness
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #AgnesOwens #workingclass #workingclasswriters
Currently available on BBC Sounds: A WORKING MOTHER, by Agnes Owens
Ten years after WW2, our unreliable narrator Betty – arch, witty, clever – is married with children & feels trapped. While her husband, Adam, drinks and complains, Betty plots her escape…
@bookstodon
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0030x96
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #AgnesOwens #workingclass #workingclasswriters #audiobooks
