Program Overview

‘Good readers make good writers’ is the ethos of this course. You develop your craft as a writer under the supervision of our world-renowned novelists, poets and playwrights while benefitting from our first-class literature teaching. Your creative and literary training enhance one another. You’re able to draw on the wealth of literature you’ve been reading to inspire your writing, and your understanding of how literature works is deepened by writing it yourself.

The teaching of creative writing in the UK began at UEA more than fifty years ago, and we are still widely seen as the home of creative writing in this country. You will be studying at a university rich in famous creative writing alumni, including Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan and Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.

Whatever kind of writing you love the most, you’ll develop it over the course of your degree by working closely with our many practising writers in seminars and workshops. In your study of English literature, you’ll have the chance to discover a  wealth of writers from the middle ages right up to poets and novelists writing now. You’ll explore diverse literary traditions from across the globe, and you’ll tackle a heady mix of genres, which currently range from the gothic to children’s literature, crime writing to Latin American fiction, nonsense writing to biography.

Norwich is an extraordinary place in which to be a writer. It’s England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, awarded in recognition of the city’s vivid literary heritage and vibrant contemporary writing scene. You’ll immerse yourself in this community, and you might find yourself sharing your work with a packed audience of students and professional writers at our UEA Live: New Writing events, or hearing readings from dozens of internationally leading literary figures.

We say that UEA is the place where literature lives – when you join the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, you’ll join a unique and supportive community of critics, writers, and drama practitioners, who bring literature to life every day.