Do you love to write as much as you love to read? Do the books you read spark your imagination and inspire you to be creative? At UEA, we believe that good readers make good writers. It’s for this reason that we combine the study of English Literature and Creative Writing at all levels of this innovative course.
You’ll immerse yourself in a thriving community of writers and thinkers. Learning from practicing writers and passionate teachers, you’ll sharpen your ability to sculpt language into stories, scenes and images. You’ll build worlds, develop your voice and find ways to express the inexpressible. Alongside this, you’ll study literatures from around the world, past and present. You’ll discover how writers and thinkers have expanded literary possibilities, made art out of lived experience and shown us, in myriad ways, what it means to be human. In the process, you will become a more discerning and attentive reader and writer.
On this course, you’ll spend a third of your time on Creative Writing and two thirds on English Literature in your first two years of study. In your third year, you may increase the amount of Creative Writing that you do or focus more fully on Literature. Either way, you’ll develop a balance between the two that best suits you. Your creative and literary training will go hand-in-hand, each enhancing the other, as you explore and experiment with diverse genres, forms and subjects, from creative non-fiction, to podcasting, to the fiction of the apocalypse.
You’ll be based in the UK’s longest-established and most prestigious Creative Writing department, which is part of UEA’s vibrant School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing (you can follow our activities on Instagram!). You’ll also have access to world-leading facilities and resources, from the technological delights of the Media Suite to the opportunities of our student-run publishing project Egg Box, from the riches of the British Archive for Contemporary Writing to the Sainsbury Centre. What’s more, you’ll live and work in the beautiful city of Norwich, a UNESCO City of Literature, and home to the National Centre for Writing.
After the course, you'll have a wealth of skills that will open doors to fulfilling careers to you, whether you want to work in the creative or cultural industries, or in business, marketing or social media management. Events such as Working with Words will give you the chance to meet and network with creative industry professionals and UEA graduates working in journalism, publishing or as freelance writers. If you want to join their ranks, this is the course for you!
