Creative Writing in the Highlands and Islands
Creative writing in the Highlands and Islands is a programme shaped by its place. The landscape of the Scottish Highlands, Islands, and the north and west of Scotland, its weather, its history, its languages, and its communities, has generated a remarkable body of literature across the centuries, and studying creative writing in this context means engaging with that material as both reader and practitioner. The programme takes place within UHI's distinctive distributed model of higher education, which links campuses and learning centres across the region, and it draws on the literary and cultural richness of the area while also engaging with the broader traditions of creative writing in English and Gaelic.
At the University of the Highlands and Islands, you will develop your writing practice over four years full-time, working across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and potentially drama and screenwriting, developing your own creative voice alongside a critical understanding of how literature works and how to read other writers' work in ways that enrich your own. The programme combines workshops in creative writing, which are central to the discipline, with study of literature in a range of genres and traditions. You will develop your craft through making, revising, and receiving and giving feedback on written work, and the programme's location provides a genuinely distinctive creative environment.
The typical entry tariff is 120 UCAS points.
Graduates of creative writing programmes go on to work as novelists, poets, short story writers, journalists, screenwriters, educators, community arts practitioners, and editors. Many combine writing with teaching or other forms of work in the creative and cultural sector. The skills creative writing develops, attention to language, the ability to shape narrative and argument, and the capacity for sustained creative and critical work, are also transferable across a wide range of professional contexts.
Many graduates also go on to postgraduate study in creative writing or related disciplines.