Creative Writing and History

Creative writing and history is a combination that recognises what writers have always known: that stories are grounded in time and place, in the material reality of how people lived and what happened to them, and that writing without historical understanding tends towards abstraction or anachronism. History, conversely, requires the interpretive and imaginative skills that creative writing develops, since the past must be constructed from fragments of evidence through acts of understanding that are as much creative as analytical. Together the two disciplines produce writers who know the world they are writing about and historians who write with unusual precision and clarity.

At Liverpool Hope this four-year full-time programme begins with a foundation year and includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and a work placement. Liverpool's literary culture provides an inspiring context for creative work, and you will be taught by writers, poets, and academics connected to the local writing community and recognised internationally. You will develop your creative practice across fiction, poetry, and other forms alongside your historical knowledge and research skills, learning to draw on the past as a resource for your writing and to write about historical subjects with accuracy and imaginative life.

The year abroad and professional experience add dimensions of worldliness that enrich both disciplines.

Graduates of creative writing and history pursue careers as novelists, poets, screenwriters, and journalists alongside the more immediate paths into education, publishing, arts administration, heritage, and the literary sector. The research skills and archival competence of historical training are valued in many professional contexts beyond academic history, and the creative writing component develops communication abilities that are useful in marketing, public relations, and content creation. Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in creative writing, history, or both, and some go on to academic careers in either discipline.