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.
Works
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, The Color of the Sky and The Hills of Apollo Bay. In later years, he was particularly active in recording his family's pioneering history in Western Australia. He wrote a biography of his grandmother Edith Dircksey Cowan, entitled A Unique Position, and a biography of her uncle Maitland Brown, as well as editing the letters of Eliza and Thomas Brown, and the diary and reports of Walkinshaw Cowan. For many years, he was co-editor of the literary journal Westerly and wrote many articles and reviews for it. His manuscripts and his extensive Australiana book collection are held in Special Collections in the University of Western Australia Library.
The Peter Cowan Short Story Competition was launched by the Peter Cowan Writers Centre in 2010, in honour of Peter Cowan. The Competition involves the submission of stories of a maximum of 600 words, and is administered by the Peter Cowan Writers Centre in Joondalup, Western Australia.
Selected bibliography
Drift short stories
The Unploughed Land novella / short stories
Summer novel
The Empty Street novella / short stories
Seed novel
The Tins short stories
Mobiles short stories
The Color of the Sky novel
A Window in Mrs X's Place selected short stories from previous volumes
