Creative Writing and English Literature BA

University of East Anglia

Overview

The writer's world has never been more diverse, exciting, and collaborative. UEA – which became the first UK university to teach creative writing over 50 years ago – has played a major role in shaping this world. Since then, countless writers have emerged from our seminars and workshops and made a lasting impact on the field of contemporary literature. Are you ready to join them?

As a student of Creative Writing and English Literature, you'll hone your writing skills while exploring literatures from a host of genres, countries, and periods. You'll dive into modules that will take your writing practice out of the classroom and into the working world. Through seminars, workshops, and placements you'll develop skills across disciplines and media, in community engagement, and in publishing and presenting your own work. You’ll be primed to enter a writer's world that is collaborative, diverse, and endlessly exciting.

About the course

'To write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of reading.’ So wrote Susan Sontag. At UEA we believe that good readers make good writers. For this reason we combine the study of Creative Writing with the study of Literature at all levels of our degree programmes. In this way, your creative and literary training go hand-in-hand.

In addition to the creative writing workshops offered by this world-famous degree, this course offers modules designed to help you enter the working writer's world. You’ll become familiar with collaborative practice, working with makers and thinkers in other disciplines. On our innovative creative non-fiction module, you’ll experience writing in real-world contexts and learn how to make that world your subject. You’ll learn how to produce, publish and perform your work to a professional standard.

You’ll be studying at a university rich in famous alumni, including Booker Prize winners Ian McEwan and Anne Enright, Forward Prize winner Mona Arshi, and Nobel Prize winner Sir Kazuo Ishiguro. You’ll draw inspiration from this lineage, working closely with our many practicing novelists, scriptwriters, poets in seminars and workshops.

In your study of English literature, you’ll discover a wealth of writers from the classical past right up to poets and novelists writing now. You might explore diverse literary traditions from across the globe, and you’ll tackle a heady mix of genres which currently range from the gothic to contemporary fiction, crime writing to children’s literature, early modern women’s writing to modern Japanese fiction. 

Whichever modules you choose, you’ll be taught by our world-leading writers and critics. UEA’s School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing is famous for innovation in teaching and for cutting-edge research – that’s why in the most recent Times Higher Education Analysis (REF2021), UEA was ranked 19th in the UK for the quality of its research in English Language and Literature.

You’ll explore the glories of Norwich, an extraordinary place to be a writer. Not only is it beautiful; it’s also England’s first UNESCO City of Literature – awarded in recognition of the city’s literary heritage and vibrant contemporary writing scene – and home to the National Centre for Writing. You’ll immerse yourself in this community, perhaps sharing your work with an audience of students and writers at our UEA Live: New Writing series, or attending literary festival events with internationally renowned figures.

We say that UEA is the place where literature lives – when you join the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, you join a unique, supportive community of critics, writers, and drama practitioners who bring literature to life.  It’s a good place to be, and you can find out more about the activities in our School by following us on Instagram.

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