English Literature with Creative Writing

English literature and creative writing together form a natural partnership, rooted in the conviction that serious reading makes better writing and that writing makes you a more attentive reader. Literature gives you access to the full range of what writers have achieved across centuries and genres, developing your critical vocabulary, your sense of form and your understanding of how language creates meaning and effect. Creative writing puts that understanding into practice, giving you the space and the challenge to develop your own voice and to discover what you want to say and how you want to say it.

At the University of East Anglia, which has a long and distinguished history in creative writing, this three-year full-time programme weaves the two disciplines together at every level. You will study literary texts with care and attentiveness, engaging with the history, theory and criticism of literature in English from earlier periods through to the present. Alongside this, you will work on your own writing across a range of forms, including fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction, developing craft and confidence through workshop discussion, close reading of contemporary practice and sustained creative effort.

The curriculum is built on the belief that good readers make good writers, and the two strands inform each other throughout.

The skills you develop across this degree are both creative and analytical. You will become a more disciplined and imaginative writer, a more precise and thoughtful reader, and a communicator who understands how language shapes experience and response.

Graduates move into publishing, journalism, education, marketing, communications, broadcasting, the arts and a wide range of other sectors where strong written communication is valued. Many also pursue further creative work as writers, editors or critics, and the degree provides excellent preparation for postgraduate study in creative writing, literature or publishing.