English and Creative Writing

English and Creative Writing is a degree that asks you to do two things simultaneously: to read with critical intelligence and to write with craft and intention. These are not separate activities. Writers who understand how the texts they admire actually work, what choices the author made and why, are better placed to make those choices themselves.

And critics who write fiction or poetry discover things about the texts they study that pure analysis cannot reveal. The combination is richer than either discipline in isolation.

At Teesside University, the three-year full-time degree develops your close reading skills across a range of literary forms and periods, from poetry and drama to the novel and contemporary experimental writing. You will explore critical approaches and theoretical frameworks that illuminate how texts create meaning and how they connect to their historical and cultural contexts. Alongside this, the creative writing component develops your own voice across a range of modes, whether fiction, poetry, script or creative non-fiction, through workshopping, mentoring and sustained practice.

You will learn to give and receive constructive critical feedback, which is one of the most transferable professional skills the degree provides.

Teesside is a university with a strong emphasis on student experience and employability, and the English and Creative Writing programme is designed to develop skills that are directly useful in a wide range of professional contexts: the ability to write clearly and compellingly, to read and edit carefully, and to think about audience and purpose with precision.

Graduates work in publishing, journalism, copywriting, content creation, education, communications, public relations, broadcasting and the arts. Many pursue freelance writing careers alongside other work, and others go on to postgraduate study in creative writing, English literature or education, including PGCE programmes that lead to teaching qualifications.