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MA Creative Writing

  • DeadlineStudy Details:

    MA 1 year full-time, 2 years part-time

Course Description

Our challenging, practice-based course offers you a unique approach to the practice of writing, emphasising innovation and experimentation in your work. On our MA Creative Writing, you deepen your knowledge of literary tradition, exploring different modes and genres in order to develop your own creative and expressive written skills. You expand your use of creative writing techniques and improve your critical judgement of your own work.

Our course encourages you to develop your writing by stepping outside your comfort zone and discovering the different approaches to verbal art that are possible today. This will invigorate your own practice, whether you are writing psychogeography, plays, novels, stories or something else.

You will choose from a variety of modules, covering topics such as: Development of a novel plan, from research and concept-development, to plotting, character, and structure Experimental language play of the Oulipo group across the short story, autobiography, cartoons, cookery and theatre Psychogeography, writing about walking, place, landscape, history and the psychic environment Poetic practice across experimental writing in poetry from the performative to the visual To help you hone your craft, we also host a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, professional writers on-hand to help you develop your writing on a one-to-one basis, and regularly host talks and readings by visiting writers.

Essex has nurtured a long tradition of distinguished authors whose work has shaped literature as we know it today, from past giants such as the American poets Robert Lowell and Ted Berrigan, to contemporary writers such as mythographer and novelist Dame Marina Warner, and Booker Prize winner Ben Okri. This course is also available on a part-time basis.

Entry Requirements

We will consider all applicants with 2:2 or above, or equivalent international qualifications. For some courses, there may be additional requirements which can be found on our website.

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Fees

For fees and funding options including scholarships available please visit website to find out more

Student Destinations

Many of our students have gone on to successfully publish their work, notable recent alumni including:

  • Ida Løkås, who won a literary prize in Norway for The Beauty That Flows Past, securing a book deal
  • Alexia Casale, whose novel Bone Dragon was published by Faber & Faber and subsequently featured on both the Young Adult Books of the Year 2013 list for The Financial Times, and The Independent’s Books of the year 2013: Children
  • Elaine Ewart, graduate from our MA Wild Writing and PhD Creative Writing courses, placed second in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2015
  • Patricia Borlenghi, the founder of Patrician Press, which has published works by a number of our alumni
  • Petra McQueen, who has written for The Guardian and runs creative writing courses and is studying PhD Creative Writing in the Department

We also offer supervision for PhD, MPhil and MA by Dissertation in different literatures and various approaches to literature, covering most aspects of early modern and modern writing in English, plus a number of other languages.

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