Jen's Party

In Jen's Party, soon-to-be fifteen-year-old Jen immediately regrets agreeing to her crazy Aunt Belle's plan for a birthday party which involves, among other notions, flirting with the town's entire male population. With a perfectly tuned ear for the droll and the deadly, Owens can spin a tale of domestic mayhem that is at once disarmingly tense and movingly human.

Published to celebrate Agnes Owens' centenary year in 2026.



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.