边山大学

This is a programme for practising writers who wish to improve their craft, learn about contemporary forms of writing and continue to reflect on their progress. This is both in terms of a distinctive philosophy of writing and in terms of the practicalities of making creative work public.

You should have some experience of writing fiction, poetry or prose (although there is not a requirement for this work to have been published), or scriptwriting, and wish to further your skills within the academic context of creative writing as an academic discipline. You will work with a core team of professional writers and other professionals to develop your creative work and nurture an understanding about the nature of your continuing creativity, aiming towards producing a final manuscript for possible publication.

What will I study?

You will begin straight away to experience the benefits of the regular workshops that form an integral part of the programme. You will discuss the work of others on the MA as well as learning from their discussion of your work. You will also receive tutor feedback.

You will study a variety of contemporary literature which will feed into your writing where needed, along with a study of the poetics of contemporary writers (that is, the things writers have written about their own writing philosophies and practices). The aim is to influence your practical development, allowing you to develop your own poetics and philosophy of composition.

In the first weeks of the course you will research markets and outlets for your work and complete submissions of your writing. You will also compile a professional development audit of your activities so far (which may not be extensive, of course). You will be asked to keep a log throughout the programme to enable you to track your development.

The ethos of this Masters degree is expressed in terms of activities, experiences and types of assessment. The activity of writing is primary and it follows that:

Workshop participation is central to the experience of the programme;
Reading as a writer is recognised as a necessary correlative to writing as a practice;
Poetics is central to the philosophy of the programme, as a speculative writerly discourse about how writing is to be made.

Career Prospects

What are my career prospects?

The thinking behind the professional development strand is that writers seldom exclusively work as writers, but need to learn to combine their principal involvement and passion for literary composition with other activities (whether they are of a literary nature or not).

Of course, as a Masters in a humanities subject you will find this qualification useful in a variety of professional contexts, such as in school teaching, which encourages staff to work at Masters level. It provides a sound basis for further study (e.g. PhD work in Creative Writing).

Previous graduates have gone on to publish with major publishers, win prizes, edit magazines and books, and are active in the pedagogy of Creative Writing as a robust academic discipline.