- Join a course taken by many successful published writers (.pdf) including Costa Short Story winner Caroline Ward Vine, Penny Hancock, and Kaddy Benyon
- Learn from published writers including Laura Dietz (In The Tenth House; chapters in The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English / New Writing) and Dr Tiffany Angus ('What Cannot be Described' in The Book of Flowering)
- Get feedback on your writing from other students as well as published authors
- Refine your existing projects or experiment with different forms of writing
- Study techniques used by acclaimed writers through history
Our MA Creative Writing will give you the rare opportunity to improve your writing by practising and sharing it with a close group of fellow writers, including specialist lecturers who are published authors.
You will study the most acclaimed writers of the past 200 years and discover the techniques they used to make their writing stand out. Our in-class and extra-curricular exercises will allow you to practise your technique with different forms of writing and in areas such as characterisation, structure, and pacing.
Using what you have learned, you will create samples of your writing to share with your lecturers and fellow students, allowing you to receive a wide range of responses to your work as well as learning to critically evaluate the work of others.
Our optional modules will give you the chance to explore topics from publishing to Renaissance drama and, at the end of the course, you can choose a piece of writing to develop in depth on our Major Project module.
Throughout the course, you will get advice and support from our team of specialists, including Course Leader Dr Tiffani Angus and Laura Dietz, as well as our Royal Literary Fund Fellows.
You will also have access to talks, masterclasses, and networking opportunities with agents, publishers, and other established writers, including many events organised by our Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Aims
Our MA Creative Writing will help you prepare for a career as a creative writer or in related areas such as publishing and the media, but will also give you critical and analytical skills valued by many employers.
Many of our past students (.pdf) have gone on to have successful careers as writers, including Costa Short Story Award 2019 winner Caroline Ward Vine, Kaddy Benyon, Penny Hancock, and Kate Swindlehurst.
You might also decide to continue on to a research degree, such as our PhD Creative Writing.
Modules & assessment
Core modules
- Patterns of Story: Fiction and its Forms
- Master's Project in Creative Writing
Optional modules (subject to availability)
- Workshop: the Short Story
- Shakespeare and Society
- Twentieth and Twenty First Century Fiction and Social Change
- Creativity and Content in Publishing
- Workshop: the Novel
- Special Topic in Creative Writing/English Literature
- The Business of Publishing
- Revolution and Reform in the Long Nineteenth Century
Assessment
Modules are subject to change and availability.
You will show your progress on the course through a mix of essays, your own writing samples, and critical reflections on your work.
The major project at the end of the course will allow you to submit up to 15,000 words of your own writing project, including a critical commentary.
