English with Creative Writing

English with creative writing is a degree for those who want to understand literature from both the outside and the inside: as readers and critical thinkers who engage with the work of others, and as writers who bring their own creative practice to bear on the forms and traditions they are studying. Reading and writing are mutually illuminating activities, and studying them together produces a different and richer understanding of both than either alone would generate.

At Leicester you will study the most inspirational texts in the English language across periods and genres, developing skills in close reading, literary analysis, and critical argument. Alongside this, creative writing develops your craft across fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and screenwriting, giving you practical experience of the challenges and possibilities of each form. You will learn to read as a writer, paying attention to the choices that other writers make, and to write with a reader's awareness of how form and language shape experience.

The three-year full-time programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study literature and writing in a different national context and to bring that experience back into your creative and critical work.

Graduates pursue careers in writing, publishing, journalism, teaching, broadcasting, the civil service, communications, marketing, and the creative industries. The combination of literary analytical skill and creative practice is valuable in any professional context where understanding, interpreting, or producing written language matters, which is to say a very wide range of contexts. Many students continue to postgraduate study in creative writing, English literature, or journalism.