Creative Writing

Creative writing as a discipline takes the impulse to tell stories, make meaning, and find language for experience seriously as an intellectual and artistic project. It is concerned not just with producing texts but with understanding how they work: how narrative creates tension and meaning, how voice and perspective shape the reader's experience, how the choice of form is itself a kind of argument. A university creative writing programme combines practice, in which you write and receive feedback on your work, with critical reading, in which you examine how published writers have solved the problems you are encountering in your own work.

At the University of Essex this three-year full-time programme takes a broad multi-genre approach, working across and between fiction, poetry, non-fiction, psychogeography, performance writing, and other forms. You will explore the full range of creative possibilities, developing both the technical craft of writing in different modes and your own distinctive creative sensibility. The programme encourages you to take risks, to work in unfamiliar forms, and to develop the self-critical awareness that sustains a writing life beyond the degree.

You will read widely in the literatures that inform your practice and learn to respond to and learn from the writing of your peers.

Creative writing graduates pursue careers across a wide range of fields, often combining writing practice with professional work in publishing, education, journalism, arts administration, broadcasting, and digital media. Teaching, at secondary and higher education level, is a well-established route for those who wish to share the discipline with others. Many graduates also work in copywriting, communications, content creation, and the charity or cultural sectors, where the ability to write clearly and compellingly is highly valued.

Further study in creative writing at masters or doctoral level is a path for those who wish to develop their practice or pursue academic careers in the field.