Have you got a story to tell? Our MA in Creative Writing will help you develop your creative writing practice, experiment with a variety of forms, and discover your voice. Find out how to make your way in the world as a writer, exploring your creative potential in a supportive and well-resourced environment.
This challenging, practice-based course will lift you as a writer, offering you a unique approach emphasising innovation and experimentation, and encouraging you to develop your best and most authentic work. You will graduate with the skills required for professional practice in the creative writing industry.
You are encouraged to try new approaches and to work across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, TV drama, or even translation. In your course you’ll read a wide variety of texts, share ideas in collaborative workshops, deepen your understanding of form and technique, experiment and develop your own ideas and those of your fellow writers. You can specialise from the start.
We take a rigorous and creative approach to enable you to develop your ideas, voice and craft. We understand that the most ambitious work takes time and we support you as you develop your own style. We can help you discover how to make your writing more effective, and learn how to assess your work professionally.
A first or second class honours degree or equivalent in a relevant subject, or substantial creative writing experience. You are required to submit a sample of your creative writing, and this will be the most significant factor in admissions decisions. Applicants may be called to interview.
A piece or portfolio of creative work should be uploaded on the ‘Declaration’ page of the online application form. If fiction, this should be around 1,500–2,000 words; if poetry, approximately four pages. This should be written in English, and should be a recent sample where possible. We're looking for ambition and originality, and a firm grasp of the form in which you're working and its essential elements (e.g. structure, characterisation, theme, effective imagery, appropriate choice of form, clarity and originality of concept and language). We will read this sample to ensure that you have the necessary experience and grounding in writing craft to undertake MA study.
On the ‘Course Details’ page, you should submit a description of around 300 words of your creative writing plans. Please tell us whether you intend to work in fiction, poetry, or narrative non-fiction and what experience you have working in this form. Please also give some indication of the concerns, style, ideas and/or themes that you are interested in exploring in your work.
Candidates who hold no first degree, or a first degree in a non-literary/creative subject area should include in their applications a summary of any information that might allow us to support the application on the grounds of ‘equivalent professional status’. This could include previous writing publication credits or other successes and/or relevant professional achievements.
All applicants are considered on an individual basis and additional qualifications, professional qualifications and relevant experience may also be taken into account when considering applications.
Please see our International Student website for entry requirements by country and other relevant information. Due to visa restrictions, students who require a student visa to study cannot study part-time unless undertaking a distance or blended-learning programme with no on-campus provision.
This course requires an Excellent level of English language, equivalent to C1 on CEFR.
Details on how to meet this requirement can be found on our English Language requirements webpage.
Examples:
IELTS 7.0 with a minimum of 7.0 in each component
PTE Academic 76 with a minimum of 76 in each sub-test
A degree from the UK
A degree from a Majority English Speaking Country
We’ve created the most progressive approach to higher education, developing and modernising our curriculum. For 2025 our courses will be designed with you at their heart to deliver a top-class student experience and career outcomes.
The following modules are what students will typically study, but this may change year to year in response to new developments and innovations.
You take all compulsory modules. You then select two from the remaining list of optional modules.
What kind of writer do you want to be? What are some of the key ideas, forms and genres that preoccupy contemporary writers of poetry, literary fiction and narrative non-fiction? How will your own work be situated in this terrain?
Through talks and seminar sessions with practitioners, you will discover how a diverse range of writers approach their craft, and discuss what is current in contemporary writing. You will have the opportunity to plan and deliver events. You will be encouraged to respond to the questions that emerge from these conversations and to frame your own critical and creative enquiry, thinking about your own work in dialogue with a wider literary, social and cultural context (or contexts).
This module will help you to understand the contemporary literary landscape and to think through your own ambitions and identity as a writer.
How do writers make a living? What does it mean to take a piece of writing into the world and sell it? How do we begin to understand the way in which literary works are bought and sold? Are there other ways of getting an audience for your work, and do they also have value? You will learn to understand the complex world of the professional writer. You will become familiar with the workings of literary agents, publishing houses, newspapers and magazines, journals, small presses and online platforms and think about how to find an audience for your work. You will produce a pitch for your own work and then reflect on your own professional practice.
It’s time to really focus on your own creative project. In this final workshop-based module of the course, through reflective group discussion, editorial exercises designed to help you revise and refine your writing, tailored reading recommendations, intensive peer workshops and one-to-one tutorials, you will work towards a fully realised and developed piece of writing. Whether you create something self-contained or part of a longer piece of writing, a continuation of an existing project, or the start of something new, you will think towards your dissertation and consider how the work on this module will help you to prepare for it. You will come to a better understanding of your own writing process, explore new dimensions in your practice, and feel more confident in your own writing voice.
TBC
What makes a great piece of literary fiction? And how should we start writing it? On this module you will read a range of contemporary literary fiction, including novels and short stories, and think about how you can apply cutting-edge writing techniques to your own work. You will learn how to create nuanced, engaging and sophisticated literary characters, and put them in dramatic situations and exciting locations. You will revisit the basics of plotting and then be encouraged to build on this and work with known literary structures in order to create work that is both formally controlled and original.
You will develop your fiction-writing techniques, including how to plot a full-length novel, work on deep characterisation and create convincing dialogue, and you will further explore your own literary voice. You may be continuing to work on a project begun in Fiction 1, or starting something entirely new. Workshops will provide a supportive critical and creative space to generate new work and to build editorial skills. Your seminar leader will work with you to identify and build on the strengths and address weaknesses of your writing.
What is ‘life writing’? How can a single genre contain such diverse forms as memoir, biography, nature writing, eco-critical writing, travel writing, confession, case study? Where are the borderlines between fiction and non-fiction? (Are there in fact borderlines between fiction and non-fiction?) These questions will be considered, and different stylistic and formal techniques investigated and experimented with, as you work towards finding your own subject matter(s) and your own narrative style and mode.
You will encounter a wide range of examples from antiquity to the contemporary. We will explore the topic thematically, working with different forms and sub-genres in turn. Writing exercises will enable you to experiment with various approaches. As the term develops, there will be more time given to the workshop component, as you create your own piece of narrative non-fiction—either self-contained, or as part of a wider project.
You will situate and heighten awareness of your own work in relation to your practice and to practitioners in English and other languages. We will explore a range of intertextual practices, including translating, creating variations, and adapting texts. Each week you will focus on creating a new text in English. To that end, each week will look at different texts, from Sappho to *The Simpsons*, translations, versions, and adaptations of those texts, contextualised with a study of translation theory, and think about various intertextual techniques to use in our creative writing. You are not expected to know any other language! Instead, for foreign-language texts, you will use cribs, literal translations, commentaries, and transliterations, among other tools, to inspire and guide you in creating your own versions, as is common practice amongst translators. You will complete a translation or adaptation project in poetry, narrative prose, or playwriting.
You take a total of four modules, for which you will produce approximately 7000 words each (or an equivalent number of poems or translations). In addition, you write a creative dissertation of about 12000 words (or an equivalent number of poems or translations).
For course aims and learning outcomes please see the course specification.
The Templeman Library has excellent research resources, as do the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library. There are a number of special collections: the John Crow Collection of Elizabethan and other early printed texts; the Reading/Raynor Collection of theatre history (over 7,000 texts or manuscripts); ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online); the Melville manuscripts relating to popular culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries; the Pettingell Collection (over 7,500 items) of 19th-century drama; the Eliot Collection; children’s literature; and popular literature. A gift from Mrs Valerie Eliot has increased the Library’s already extensive holdings in modern poetry. The British Library in London is also within easy reach.
Our research centres organise many international conferences, symposia and workshops.
You are encouraged to organise and participate in a conference which takes place in the summer term. This provides you with the invaluable experience of presenting your work to your peers.
We run several series of seminars, lectures and readings throughout the academic year. Our weekly research seminars are organised collaboratively by staff and graduates in the School. Speakers range from our own postgraduate students, to members of staff, to distinguished lecturers who are at the forefront of contemporary research nationally and internationally.
The Centre for Creative Writing hosts a very popular and successful weekly reading series. Recent guests have included: poets Cole Swensen, Lee Ann Brown, Peter Gizzi, Sarah Crewe and Stephen Collis, fiction writers Avni Doshi, May-Lan Tan, Taymour Soomro, Niven Govinden and Megan Hunter, memoirist Crystal Rasmussen, and journalists Bidisha and Alex Peake-Tomkinson. Find out more on our YouTube channel.
Staff publish regularly and widely in journals, newspapers and magazines including Granta, The Guardian, The Literary Review, Lit Hub, New Statesman, Poetry Review, PN Review, and Poetry London. They also edit poetry periodicals including Free Verse, Litmus, and Datableed.
All students registered for a taught Master's programme are eligible to apply for a place on our Global Skills Award Programme. The programme is designed to broaden your understanding of global issues and current affairs as well as to develop personal skills which will enhance your employability.
The particular interests of the Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century converge around gender, class, nation, travel and empire, and the relationship between print and material culture. Staff in the Centre pursue cutting-edge approaches to the field and share a commitment to interdisciplinary methodologies.
The Centre regularly hosts visiting speakers as part of the School of English research seminar programme, and hosts day symposia, workshops and international conferences.
The recently established Centre for Victorian Literature and Culture provides a stimulating and distinctive research environment for staff and students through seminars, conferences and collaborative research projects. The Centre places a particular emphasis on Victorian literature and culture associated with Kent and the south-east.
Research in north American literature is conducted partly through the Faculty-based Centre for American Studies, which also facilitates co-operation with modern US historians. Staff research interests include 20th-century American literature, especially poetry, Native American writing, modernism, and cultural history.
The Centre for Creative Writing is the focus for most practice-based research in the School. Staff organise a thriving series of events and run a research seminar for postgraduate students and staff to share ideas about fiction-writing. Established writers regularly come to read and discuss their work.
The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies has a distinctive brand of interdisciplinarity, strong links with local archives and archaeological trusts, and provides a vibrant forum for investigating the relationships between literary and non-literary modes of writing in its weekly research seminar.
The Centre for Modern Poetry is a leading centre for research and publication in its field, and participates in both critical and creative research. Staff regularly host visiting speakers and writers, participate in national and international research networks, and organise graduate research seminars and public poetry readings.
Established in 1994, the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Research has acquired an international reputation for excellence in research. It has an outstanding track record in publication, organises frequent international conferences, and regularly hosts leading postcolonial writers and critics. It also hosts a visiting writer from India every year in association with the Charles Wallace Trust.
Many career paths can benefit from the writing and analytical skills that you develop as a postgraduate student. Students have gone on to work in academia, journalism, broadcasting and media, publishing, writing and teaching; as well as more general areas such as banking, marketing analysis and project management.
The 2025/26 annual tuition fees for this course are:
For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.
Tuition fees may be increased in the second and subsequent years of your course. Detailed information on possible future increases in tuition fees is contained in the Tuition Fees Increase Policy. If you are uncertain about your fee status please contact information@kent.ac.uk.
The University will assess your fee status as part of the application process. If you are uncertain about your fee status you may wish to seek advice from UKCISA before applying.
For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.
Tuition fees may be increased in the second and subsequent years of your course. Detailed information on possible future increases in tuition fees is contained in the Tuition Fees Increase Policy. If you are uncertain about your fee status please contact information@kent.ac.uk.
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