What you will study

The Creative Writing MA (Distance Learning) follows the same course structure as the successful and popular Creative Writing MA. You'll be taught through individual tutorials, streamed lectures and readings held at or sponsored by the University.

The Writers' Workshop module will encourage you to develop your writing 'voice' through engagement with fellow students across a range of genres (in fiction or creative non-fiction), while the Special Study module enables you to specialise in one genre, such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama.

You will learn the elements of fiction, poetry and drama as well as study relevant critical theory and try out your own fictional experiments in the Critical Challenges module. You'll take part in online masterclasses and put all you have learned into practice in the dissertation module. It is possible to use both workshop modules and the dissertation together to work towards a substantial part of a longer piece such as a novel.

This Creative Writing MA will give you the knowledge and confidence to enter the cultural debate and begin to identify outlets for your own writing.

Timetables

Full-time students can attend two campus days, scheduled annually, usually in November and February.

Part-time students normally attend the November campus day in the first year and the February campus day in the second year.

Core modules

Full-time students take two 30-credit modules each semester, including a Special Study workshop on a particular genre e.g. poetry, drama or fiction, in the second semester. You'll participate in general workshops, reading sessions and tutorials with your assigned dissertation supervisor throughout the course.

You may then choose to complete a 15,000-word 60-credit dissertation accompanied by a 3,000-word critical review, for which you'll receive one-to-one supervision as you work towards a September completion.

Core modules

• Creative Writing Dissertation
• Special Study: Workshops in Popular Genre Writing
• Writing the Contemporary
• Writers' Workshop
• Critical Challenges for Creative Writers

Please note

Optional modules only run if there is enough demand. If we have an insufficient number of students interested in an optional module, that module will not be offered for this course.

Some of our departmental graduates have achieved notable successes, having published short stories and novels which were started as part of their degree, and attracted good literary agents, for example:

• Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel, My Sister the Serial Killer, reviewed by The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4's Open Book and Front Row, has won the Crime and Thriller book of the year at the British Book Awards; Oyinkan is the first black woman to do so.
• Grainne Murphy has recently signed a two-book deal with Legend Press. Her debut novel, Where the Edge Is, was published in September 2020, with The Ghostlights to be published in 2021.
• Ben Halls' debut The Quarry was a book of the day in The Guardian in March 2020.
• Amy Clarke has signed a two-book deal. Like Clockwork is a psychological suspense novel about a true crime podcast host who's obsessively trying to solve the decades-old cold case of a notorious Minnesotan serial killer whose victims were each one year younger than the last. It is due to be published in March/April 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, with a second book to follow.
• A story Seraphina Madsen wrote for the MA Critical Challenges module was published in the UK's pre-eminent literary journal, The White Review, and secured her an agent and a book deal.
• Stevan Alcock is another MA student whose debut novel – workshopped on our MA – was published by the 4th Estate.
• Hannah Vincent is a former MFA student with novels out with Myriad Editions and Salt.
• Myriad Editions also run a writing competition each year aimed at finding new writers, with MFA student Karly Stilling winning in 2015. This year the award was won by another current Kingston student, Sylvia Carr. Former MA (now a PhD student) Joseph Pierson was a recent runner-up.
• Julia Lewis is a former MFA student and experimental poet who has gone on to publish a wide range of works. She also rewrote MA tutor James Miller's novel Lost Boys as a collection of experimental poetry.
• Stefan Mohamed won the Dylan Thomas Prize and has gone on to have a successful career as a writer of YA fiction.
• MA student Vicky Newham signed a two-book deal for her crime series. Vicky is on the Daggers longlist for the best crime novel by a first-time author.
• Faiqa Mansab published her debut novel This House of Clay and Water in Pakistan and India to great acclaim and it has been optioned by the talented Sheherzade Sheikh for screen adaptation.
• Other successes include Susie Lynes and Lauren Forry.
• Other former students have gone on to work in editorial posts in the publishing industry.