Borrowed Stories and love at first sight
Karlee Bowlby (MLitt 2021) was inspired to study at St Andrews after falling in love with Scotland during her year abroad in 2013. Despite online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic, she found a connection with fellow student Ewan Bowlby (PhD 2022). Karlee discusses their whirlwind romance at St Andrews, Ewan’s untimely death in 2022 and the continued impact of his research.
My St Andrews story began in 2013 when, as an English student at the University of California, Berkeley, I studied abroad for a semester at the University of St Andrews. Those four short months left a lasting impression, and when later recounting my experience of that semester, I would often tell people that I had fallen in love with Scotland. I never would have guessed that seven years later, I would have the privilege of returning to St Andrews and falling in love with the most remarkable person I had ever met in the beautiful place that had already stolen my heart.
A lockdown connection
In 2020, my life, along with most of the world, had been turned upside down by Covid-19. In the time between applying for a place on an MLitt in Theology and the Arts and being admitted, the pandemic changed the landscape of daily life, education and travel. Regardless of this, I was fortunate to be able to make my way to Scotland and arrived full of hopes that restrictions would ease and that my studies would become more normal as the year progressed. This was not the case.
Amidst the bleak days of quarantines, online classes and the constant disappointment of cancelled plans and events, I found a ray of sunshine in one face that kept popping up on my screen. Ewan Bowlby was a PhD student in The Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA), the same institute in which I was studying for my MLitt.
We got to know each other through the online gatherings of ITIA’s research seminars and of its student-led artist group, Transept. One of the things that first struck me about Ewan was his dedication to serving and leading Transept, although he didn’t consider himself an artist. He was so passionate about art – and what’s even more rare, he was so passionate about artists – that he showed up every week to learn from, support and participate in conversation with creatives.
Love at first sight
When I finally met Ewan in real life in the spring, the next thing that struck me about him was his height. This was a characteristic of his that our online introduction had not conveyed. Love at first sight is how I would describe my first day in St Andrews, and it’s how I would describe that first meeting with Ewan as well. That initial walk on West Sands set in motion a glorious season of long walks and talks.
Lockdown restrictions meant that we couldn’t meet indoors, so we walked every inch of St Andrews – from the Coastal Path to the Lade Braes – and spent hours watching the sea from the pier and the leaves turning from Hallow Hill.
After all that walking and talking, we decided we wanted to walk through the rest of our lives together. We got engaged on the Isle of Skye and began planning a St Andrews wedding. Little did we know, the cancerous tumour in Ewan’s brain that had inspired his doctoral research would soon begin growing again. After five stable years, he was thrown back into a chaos of brain surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In the midst of this, we had the precious experience of getting married surrounded by friends and family on a beautiful May day in All Saints’ Church on North Castle Street.
Ewan’s tumour continued to grow and caused his death seven months later. In that short time, he managed to run a half-marathon in support of Maggie’s cancer care charity, submit his thesis and be awarded a PhD.
Borrowed Stories
Ewan’s research investigated ways in which popular artworks such as novels, films and television series can offer emotional, psychological and spiritual care for cancer patients. However, his desire was for this research to be of practical benefit rather than remaining in the realm of academic theory. Shortly before his death, Ewan began the project of turning his thesis into a popular book with details of his own story.
“The central theme is storytelling,” Ewan said when describing the book. “I learned to overcome silent self-imprisonment to find a new story of love, light and purpose to tell after being diagnosed with cancer…I present this story as a message of hope.”
Ewan wanted to share his story, and the resources that helped him navigate living with and dying from cancer, to encourage others to tell their stories and to navigate their situations. He wrote: “My hope is that these thematic explorations afford inspiration and encouragement to others seeking a more constructive, imaginative relationship with their mortality.”
Even in his days of illness, Ewan was an incredible and constant source of support and encouragement to me both in my personal life and in my artistic practice as an illustrator. He believed so passionately in the power of the arts to truly help people and to make a difference in the world. It’s a joy to know that the research he carried out as a St Andrews student championing popular art is now available to a wider audience through the posthumous publication of his book Borrowed Stories: Facing Cancer with Culture – from Breaking Bad to The Divine Comedy.
Link to Ewan’s full academic thesis
Link to the creative short story about cancer treatment that Ewan wrote and Karlee illustrated