Joe Corrie was born in 1894 in Slamannan near Falkirk. A few years later his family moved to Cardenden in Fife. He left school at 14 in 1908 to work in the local pits and during the First World War he worked at a colliery in Ayrshire. On his return to Cardenden in 1918 he began writing verse and it wasn’t until the twenties that he began working on plays. The Bowhill Players formed firstly to perform small sketches and then to appear in In Time o’ Strife, which toured to neighbouring villages.

The play took off, even being performed by a London-based company. He continued to write and in 1928 In Time o’ Strife toured to over 25 Fife mining villages. In 1929 the group changed its name to the Fife Miner Players and toured music theatres in Scotland and the north of England.

By the 1930s Corrie was increasingly involved in writing for the Scottish Community Drama Association and was also writing poetry. In his later years he lived in Surrey, London and Glenrothes and latterly in Edinburgh. He died in 1968.