Lynne Bowen


Lynne Bowen is an award-winning Canadian non-fiction writer, historian, professor, and journalist, best known for her popular historical books about Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Over the years, Bowen has won awards such as the Eaton's British Columbia Book Award, the Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Writing British Columbia History and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.
Lynne Bowen is a graduate of the University of Alberta where she earned an R.N. in 1962, and a B.Sc. in Public Health Nursing in 1963, before moving to British Columbia in 1972 and raising three children. She continued her studies in history and literature at Vancouver Island University and at the University of Victoria where she completed a Master of Arts in Western Canadian History. In 1980, 3 weeks after graduation, Bowen was approached by Nanaimo's Coal Tyee Society to write a book based on 105 interviews of Vancouver Island coal miners and their families. Nanaimo coal mines had closed 30 years before and the city had been home to some of the most important coal mines in the world, along with the one of largest explosions in history -- 1887 Nanaimo mine explosion. The miners wanted their oral histories preserved. Bowen compiled those oral histories in her first book, Boss Whistle, and later book, Three Dollar Dreams. The success of these early works garnered Bowen several major literary awards and cultural grants.
Bowen continues to write in the popular history niche, and to date has written seven books, several magazine articles, and penned a monthly newspaper column entitled "Those Island People" in Victoria's Times-Colonist, inspired by her years of collecting and chronicling stories and interviews with people on Vancouver Island. From 1993-2006, she became Co-Chair of the Maclean Hunter Chair of Creative Nonfiction Writing at the University of British Columbia, a position she held until 2006.
In 2011, she was in a serious car accident that broke her legs, pelvis, wrist and sternum.
The City of Nanaimo lists Bowen on their cultural map and awarded her with the City of Nanaimo Excellence in Culture Award in 1999.
In 2018, Lynne Bowen donated her complete archives to Vancouver Island University Library's Special Collections & Archives.

Books