Gordon Bowker (1934 – 14 January 2019)[1] was an English journalist and academic who wrote biographies[2] of Malcolm Lowry, Lawrence Durrell, George Orwell and James Joyce.

Bowker grew up in a Birmingham devastated by bombing during the Second World War, where he attended grammar school at King Edward VI Camp Hill.

Bowker had always wanted to write, which drew him in to teaching back in Birmingham, qualifying from Saltley College in 1957.

[9] After leaving Goldsmiths' College in 1991, Bowker focused his attention on writing literary biography, starting with Pursued by Furies: a Life of Malcolm Lowry, which he originally published in 1993.

[16] In 2022, the Society of Authors created a new prize called the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize, awarded for a novel "focusing on the experience of travel away from home", endowed by Bowker's widow, named for Malcolm Lowry's novel Under the Volcano.