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Postgraduate Creative Writing Menu

Postgraduate Study in Creative Writing

Welcome to the Lancaster Writing Programme - one of the longest established and most prestigious writing programmes in the UK. We have hugely successful campus and distance learning programmes at both MA and PhD level. Our postgraduate MA and PhD programmes are student-centred and deploy methods of situated learning that respond directly - and in detail - to your work. Students can write on a project of their own choosing. Entry is by portfolio.

The Lancaster Writing Programme employs teaching staff with a wide variety of research interests across many forms of writing. From poetry to long prose fiction, flash fiction to work for radio, short stories, creative non-fiction and hypertext novels, we all practice and publish in many different forms and genres. At this time, we do not specialise in writing for the stage or screen, nor in writing for children, and therefore as a department that offers research-led teaching, we do not supervise postgraduate work in this area.

The campus-based courses are led by an experienced team of professional writers who have been widely published and who have won many literary awards: Jenn Ashworth, Helen Farish, Paul Farley, George Green, Zoe Lambert, Graham Mort and Jayne Steel. Our distance learning tutors are experienced and award-winning authors, Sarah Corbett, Conor O’Callaghan, Jane Draycott, Sara Maitland, Brian McCabe, Tom Pow and Michelene Wandor.

For 2013-14, we are introducing the Creative-Critical Pathway on the MA in English Literary Studies. Combining critical approaches to writing with the practice of writing itself, this MA offers new modules in fiction and poetry alongside those offered here.

• Read more about the history of the Lancaster Writing Programme and the celebrations planned for our thirtieth year.
• Read about what our current and previous students have to say about studying creative writing at Lancaster.
• Browse recent publications by our creative writing tutors.

Publications by Lancaster Students

Writers who have studied in Lancaster's Creative Writing programmes have published over seventy books in recent years. Recent Lancaster writers who have won or been nominated for major prizes include: Ali Shaw (Desmond Elliott Prize); Monique Roffey (short-listed for the Orange Prize); Jacob Polley (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize); Andrew Miller (James Tait Black Memorial Prize; the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award); Ray Robinson (James Tait Black Memorial Prize). For many more examples, see our page on publications by past and present students.

See our left-hand navigation bar for links to full descriptions of all of our postgraduate programmes. 

Postgraduate study in Creative Writing has been strengthened by the establishment, in May 2007, of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (CTWR), which links Lancaster University's postgraduate student community to extensive research activity in creative writing and its impact on society. The Centre incorporates a range of pre-existing transcultural and intercultural research activity and aims to promote the generation and comparative study of creative writing across cultures. 

In the Independent Quality Review (2009), some of the key strengths commended were developments in the postgraduate teaching of Creative Writing - in particular the pioneering use of virtual learning environments and innovative thinking about the discipline in national and international contexts.

Other information can be obtained from Lyn Kellett (l.kellett@lancaster.ac.uk).

New for 2012-13:

Creative-Critical MA Pathway on the English Literary Studies MA