Creative Writing

The MA in Creative Writing is an exciting new course at Durham University. Taught by award-winning writers Dr Paul Batchelor, Dr Naomi Booth, Kayo Chingonyi, Professor Claire Harman, Sunjeev Sahota, and Dr Sam Riviere. This is an academically rigorous degree that will develop your practical knowledge of writing poetry and prose fiction. You will receive structured support through writing workshops and one-to-one tutorials in order to develop their own ideas. You will also study a broad range of literature from the 20th and 21st centuries, and produce new work in response.

Core modules:

Creative Writing Poetry OR Creative Writing Prose Fiction

Each student will take one of these writing-workshop modules. In these modules you will write longer pieces within your chosen literary discipline, sharing your work and giving and receiving feedback and suggestions from the module convenor and the other students.

Reading as a Writer

This lecture module brings poets and prose writers together, and (unlike any of the other core modules for Creative Writing) is also open to English Studies students. Each week we discuss some key poetry and prose from across the twentieth century, focusing on the technical innovations introduced by the writers studied, and the ways in which writers learn from one another, both within their medium and beyond it.

Reading as a Writer: the Workshop

This is very much a companion module to Reading as a Writer, and is a writing-workshop module focussing on short, directed writing assignments and their discussion. The focus will be on formal and technical experiments, stretching students’ technical facility via assignments inspired by the texts studied on Reading as a Writer

Research Project

The Research Project provides students with the opportunity to produce a 6-8,000-word extended critical essay on a subject of their choosing and also provides the opportunity for students to produce a final portfolio of creative work.