Delighted to share that our new short film that traces the life, work, and legacy of Scottish writer Agnes Owens, marking the centenary of her birth in 2026 is now live on
@thealasdairgrayarchive ’s YouTube channel, link in bio to view (also you can watch on a retro TV if you come visit the Lillie Art Gallery exhibition!)
It was written and narrated by The Agnes Owens Archive custodian
@sorchadallas , with research by
@laurzzs and editing/extra footage by
@abbycarterstudio . It includes clips from new oral history interviews with Owens’ son John Crosbie
@agnesowensliteraryestate , former editor at Polygon Peter Kravitz and friend Doreen Hopwood.
Beginning in Milngavie, it presents Owens as a writer shaped by working-class life, whose fiction exposed power, resisted sentimentality, and centred overlooked voices. The film introduces a major new archive of her manuscripts and personal materials, revealing her disciplined, long-term commitment to writing.
It then situates her life within the realities of labour, motherhood, and limited opportunity, showing how she wrote in fragments while raising seven children and working multiple jobs. Her later “discovery” through a 1970s writing group—supported by figures like Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray, and James Kelman—led to the publication of her first book, Gentlemen of the West (1984), though the film stresses she had long been developing her craft.
The film highlights how her writing, grounded in everyday objects and material life, continues to inspire contemporary artists and creative responses.
It concludes by challenging the idea of Owens as an “accidental writer,” instead presenting her as a deliberate and important literary voice—one whose work is now being rightfully restored to its place in Scottish literature.
#agnesowens
#theagnesowensarchive
#alasdairgray
#thealasdairgrayarchive
