The next intake for this course is in September 2023.

This practice-based taught MA is designed to develop, hone and extend your writing. It will help prepare you for a successful career as a writer or as an arts professional.

• 100% of students said that they were overall satisfied with learning support on this course, according to the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, 2020

• The programme offers you a range of tutor and peer-led opportunities to produce new writing and critically reflect on that practice. We focus on the expressive potential and persuasive power of language whilst encouraging you to critically explore texts and their relationship to the world.

• The course will develop writing; be that in prose, poetry, life writing, creative non-fiction, script-writing or in combination or discussion across these forms. In addition, two industry-specific pathways have been developed to focus on employability in specific sectors: 
  • Creative Writing for Gaming focuses on character and narrative design, gamification and digital games.
  • Creative Writing with Publishing allows students to work on the production of books by taking two modules from our successful and well regarded MA Publishing.

• The degree without a specialist pathway maintains a strong focus on employability. All students receive advice and guidance from working writers who will take you through contracts and tax, the business of publishing and how to run a workshop.

• The course gives all students the opportunity to undertake arranged work experience in the arts or in communication. Graduates leave this MA with a portfolio of their own writing, prepared for a career as arts professionals (including but not limited to publication) and progression to doctoral level study

Innovative specialised pathways

The MA Creative Writing has a core programme (the MA Creative Writing) and two pathway awards: Gaming and Publishing. All of the core programme modules are specifically designed to suit their purpose and carefully integrated with each other. The programme takes into account on going research as well as developments, trends and innovations within the discipline and industries which it attends to. The core programme is modular, offering the flexibility to study in more than one writing form or genre, or focus on a single project. The teaching method encourages a gradual specialisation over the three trimesters. You participate in a core workshop in the first, where you read and respond both to published work and the work of peers. In the second trimester you work with supervisors who develop your writing in smaller group apprenticeships. In the summer you work on a significant  writing project on your own or in partnership with a community or industry.

Every student develops and reflects on their own writing and the writing of others by attending writing workshops. Depending on their pathway, students have the option of learning about voice and narrative, critical theory, writing for clients and publishing. All students have the opportunity of engaging in work experience. Professional development ranges from learning about publishing, Arts Council and literary agency interactions to writing in the community and collaborative projects. Each pathway, including the central award, consists of four core 20 credit modules, two option choices from four 20 credit modules and one option choice from two 60 credit modules. All of the pathways and the core award allow students to choose from two modules from the MA Publishing. The Publishing pathway allows students to specialise further in publishing by taking another module from the MA Publishing. In this way students are able to specialise in industry applications of creative writing.

Take a look at what our staff and students had to say about Creative Writing at Derby: