Peter Cowan (writer)

Peter Cowan (4 November 1914 – 6 June 2002) was a Western Australian writer, noted especially for his short stories.

Born in 1914 in South Perth, Peter Walkinshaw Cowan was the son of Norman Walkinshaw Cowan and Marie Emily Johnston. His grandmother was Australia's first female parliamentarian, Edith Dircksey Cowan. He was descended from several Western Australian pioneering families, including the Browns of York, the Cowans and the Wittenooms.

After leaving Wesley College, Perth in 1930, Cowan worked in insurance and as a farm labourer before completing his matriculation at Perth Technical College and subsequently entering the University of Western Australia in 1938. After completing his teaching qualifications, he worked as a teacher at Wesley College.

He married Edie Howard and they had a son, Julian. The family moved to Melbourne in 1943 while Cowan was serving in the RAAF. While in Melbourne, he became involved in the Angry Penguins modernist literary movement.

After the war, Peter Cowan returned to Perth and taught English and Geography for many years at Scotch College. In 1964, he became a Senior Tutor in English at the University of Western Australia, and later an Honorary Research Fellow after his retirement.

Peter Cowan published eight volumes of short stories, five novels and three biographies. He also edited two books of diaries and letters and co-edited seven volumes of short fiction.

His first published work was a short story, "Living", published in Angry Penguins in 1943. Over the next twenty years, he continued to publish short stories.

He received a Commonwealth Literary Fund Fellowship in 1963 to write his first novel, Summer. His other novels included Seed (1966), The Color of the Sky (1986) and The Hills of Apollo Bay (1989).

...
Wikipedia