Creative Writing

Creative writing is the practice of making original literary work, across fiction, poetry, drama, screenwriting, and non-fiction. It is a discipline that takes writing seriously as a craft requiring skill, intention, and rigour, not simply self-expression. Studying it at university level means learning to read like a writer, to understand how the formal choices made by authors, including voice, structure, point of view, imagery, and rhythm, produce their effects, and to develop your own practice through sustained experimentation and critical reflection.

It is both an artistic and an intellectual endeavour.

At Birkbeck College in central London, this three-year, full-time programme supports you in developing your creative ideas into texts across a range of forms, refining your skills and sharpening your craft through experimentation in drama, poetry, fiction, screenwriting, and non-fiction. The programme benefits from Birkbeck's location in Bloomsbury, a neighbourhood with one of the richest literary and artistic histories in the world and close proximity to publishers, literary agencies, theatres, and cultural institutions that make London one of the world's most important centres for literary culture. You will study creative writing alongside the critical and literary frameworks that help you understand what makes writing work and how your own practice connects to broader literary traditions.

A typical entry tariff of 72 points reflects a genuinely inclusive admissions threshold that welcomes writers from a wide range of prior academic backgrounds. Graduates from creative writing programmes go on to careers as novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, copywriters, editorial assistants, literary agents, communications professionals, and arts educators. The skills the discipline develops, including precision in language, structural thinking, and the ability to engage an audience, transfer widely across professional contexts.

Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in creative writing, and London's literary world provides an exceptional network for those who wish to build a writing career alongside further education.