Creative Writing in the Highlands and Islands

Creative Writing is the practice of making literature: finding the forms, voices and structures that allow lived experience, imagined worlds and complex ideas to reach readers in ways that resonate and endure. It is a discipline that develops your craft across multiple genres, from fiction and poetry to non-fiction and scripts, while also deepening your engagement with the literature that has come before you and the critical questions that serious writing raises. To write well is to read attentively, and to read attentively is to become a more conscious and deliberate writer.

At the University of the Highlands and Islands, this part-time programme is embedded in one of the most distinctive literary landscapes in the British Isles. The Highlands and Islands have given rise to a rich and distinctive tradition of writing, in Scottish Gaelic, Scots and English, shaped by the landscapes, histories, cultures and communities of the region. Studying Creative Writing in this context means engaging not only with craft and technique but with place as a literary resource, and with the traditions of oral and written storytelling that the region carries.

The part-time mode allows you to develop your practice progressively alongside other commitments, building your skills in fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction or drama at a pace that suits your life.

Graduates of Creative Writing programmes develop as writers, often pursuing a combination of independent creative work with other professional roles in education, publishing, journalism, arts administration, and the wider creative industries. The skills in close reading, precise writing, and the construction of persuasive narrative that the degree develops are transferable across many professional contexts. Many graduates also pursue postgraduate study in creative writing, English literature, or related fields, and some develop careers as teachers of creative writing.