MA in Creative Writing

• Refine your writing across a range of styles and genres
• Understand where your work fits in the current publishing world
• Be inspired and encouraged by guest writers and editors

Creative Writing at Winchester offers you the opportunity to evaluate and improve your creative writing in a dynamic, supportive environment. The programme is taught by professional writers and highly experienced practitioner-academics in Creative Writing, with a particular focus on fiction and literary non-fiction. There are opportunities to meet editors and published writers and, as your knowledge of the publishing industry expands, find out where your work fits within the market.

You study a diverse range of fiction and narrative non-fiction by acclaimed contemporary writers, which allows you to explore different styles and genres including fantasy, crime, historical fiction and literary fiction and gain a critical foundation for your own writing while increasing your knowledge of the publishing world. Throughout the course, you create new work and discuss it with a supportive group of peers alongside your tutor as you redraft and refine it. The structure of the programme enables you to experiment from week to week, hone your craft and develop complete short stories as well as engage with the demands of longer-form prose.

In the first semester, you will take modules in contemporary fiction and literary non-fiction, and also develop a project that addresses ways in which writers engage with community audiences. The second semester focuses on genre fiction and preparation for your Independent Study project, which is a substantial creative submission of 20-25,000 words written over the summer months. This could be the first part of a novel, a collection of short fiction, the opening to a work of literary non-fiction or a hybrid submission, completed with tutor support.

Year 1 (Level 7)

• The World of Writing 20
• Fictional Writing 20
• The Writer and the Community 20
• Genre Writing 20
• Independent Study Preparation 20
• Independent Study 80

Many graduates of the course have obtained publishing contracts, while others work in other aspects of publishing, or in teaching, media, the arts and business.

Pre-approved for a Master's

If you study for a Bachelor's Honours Degree with us, you will be pre-approved to start a Master's degree at Winchester. To be eligible, you will need to apply by the end of March in the final year of your degree and meet the entry requirements of your chosen Master's degree.