Creative Writing Postgraduate degree

Modules

Level 7

Compulsory module (MA only)

Creative Project

The Creative Project is intended to enable students to plan and implement a thoughtful, carefully edited and well-organised literary project. As a mode of independent study, it affords students the opportunity and time to work on self-determined tasks, reflecting on quality control and time management as well as building an awareness of their particular writing strengths and skills. The project consists of a carefully planned and executed work of original creative writing in a single genre. Students will receive comprehensive feedback and support from their tutor during the process of planning and completing the dissertation.

Compulsory modules

Creative Contexts

This compulsory module sets out to explore theoretical and research-based issues faced by creative writers. Central to our discussions about reading, writing, and research will be the exploration of literary form and context: how have established writers engaged with the various literary and extra-literary discourses that define, modify and inform the writing process? For example, we may consider such topics as modernism and postmoderism, ethnicity and writing, gender politics, and eological writing. Writers to be studied will range from modernist pioneers such as Virginia Woolf and Ezra Pound, to more contemporary examples such as Moshin Hamid, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

Archives and Research

Archives and Research is a flexible, engaging and practical module designed to work alongside and support a wide range of research projects. The module examines the many and varied roles that archives play in literary and textual culture, not only as sites for research but as arenas for debate, discovery, meaning-making and the shaping of identities. The module explores the archives of individual writers and publishers, oral history archives, and born-digital archives; and teaches the skills necessary for engaging with them, from rare book and manuscript handling to transcription and cataloguing.

Optional modules

Writing Genre Fiction: fantasy, horror, crime

Very few MAs in the country offer any specialisation in Fantasy, Crime, and Horror fiction. This “fiction of fear” will be explored over the course of this new and exciting module.

Indicative Topics:
• Modes, markets and making the most of this module
• Literatures of uncertainty: understanding the appeal and harnessing the power of genre
• Haunting and haunted: morals, memory and the meaning of monsters
• Autobiographical fantasy: authentic emotion and limitless imagination
• Structuring stories and strategy: where your work belongs and how to get it there

Dark & Transgressive Writing

Dark and transgressive fiction no longer occupies a niche role in our culture. Novels which once occupied small corners of bookshops and publishing fairs now occupy central roles. This module allows writers to explore these themes in a variety of forms. There are no limits to our imaginations. There is no limit to what we can write.

Indicative Topics:
• 50 Shades of Genre: Nerve Magazine & The Question of Transgression
• Porn & Plagiarism: Kathy Acker
• Short stories, and the attractions of sin: Charles Baudelaire
• Surrealism & Dream: Leonora Carrington & Georges Bataille
• Dystopias & Utopias: Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Roth & The Vienna Group
• Dodie Bellamy, New Narrative and Transgressive/Innovative Form

Writing for Young Readers

This module aims to demonstrate some of the particular conditions of writing for young readers. Children's literature, literature for adolescents, as well as Young Adult (YA) literature — and even New Adult literature, although this is not covered in this module — are unique in that they are is defined by their audience, and their relationship between the (usually) adult author and young reader throws up a range of issues, some of which will be addressed during this module. The course will involve technical discussion of narrative, workshop exercises and discussion, written assignments and individual tutorials. 

Fiction: Short Stories

This module examines the practice and theory of writing short stories. As part of the 'digital revolution' in publishing, literary journals and magazines have proliferated on the internet (and also in print), providing a wider demographic of writers with unprecedented publishing opportunities. 

Indicative Topics:

• The Contemporary Short Story: A Form in Flux
• Classic Narrative Structure
• Characterisation
• Fiction and Culture
• Concept-led Fiction, Language-led Fiction, Innovation and
Autobiography

Fiction: Novel

This module examines the practice and theory of writing novels. While the internet provides increasing opportunities for novelists to self-publish, the traditional publishing industry, usually facilitated by agents, offers writers unparalleled quality-control and access to marketing. The module introduces students to professional practice and industry expectations, with specific reference to the production of long-form fiction.

Indicative Topics:

• The contemporary literary novel
• Narrative
• Characterisation and their interdependant relationship
• How long-form fiction employes narrative technique
• Fiction and culture

These modules are those we currently offer and may be subject to change each year.

Indicative Timetable

Students on this course are normally in on weekday evenings.

Tuition fees and funding

September 2023 entry tuition fees

Year 1 fees, see links in table below for more information.