Program Overview

Do you want to develop your own original writing whilst engaging with the best contemporary work being published? You’ll refine your craft with guidance from the award-winning writers who teach on this workshop-based MA, as well as from visiting writers. Make the most of an opportunity to produce a substantial written project in a nurturing, creative environment. The writing skills you’ll develop will help ensure that, upon graduating, your work is ready for submission to publishers and agents.

You’ll attend four workshop-based seminars, detailed below. Throughout the term you’ll submit your best work in an environment dedicated to writing success. Writing is complemented by the reading of established authors in order to give you that all-important sense of literary context. Experienced tutors lead small seminars exploring the nuances of craft and the compositional process. We believe that all kinds of writing can inform each other, and ensure you study fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and dramatic writing (for stage and screen), before settling down to write your dissertation in a singular mode. Your dissertation will comprise a collection of poems, a stage or screen-play, or 20,000 words of prose from a story collection, novel or creative non-fiction. The ultimate goal is to help you to take your private writings to the public sphere. Full-time students take two modules per term, while part-time students take one module per term.

Key features

• Develop your confidence and writing skills in an environment supportive of creative work.
• Produce a substantial writing project which you can submit to publishers and agents.
• Benefit from the depth of experience and knowledge shared by our staff, including several award-winning writers, and visiting writers.
• Expand your own writing experience through submitting work to student publications such as Ink, and the University press published literary journal, Short Fiction. Get involved with professional organisations such as The Bridge.
• Increase your critical self-awareness on a programme designed to round you as a writer.
• Enrich your learning experience through workshop-based seminars that allow you to explore the diverse strands of creative writing, from stories to screenplays.