Literature and Creative Writing

Overview

You deepen your knowledge of literary tradition across a variety of genres in order to develop your practical skills of understanding, expression and invention. Pursue your love of reading and explore some of the most important novels, poems, and plays from the United States, the Caribbean and Europe while developing your own writing through a variety of planned readings and writing exercises.

We’ll teach you to be your own editor; critically judging your own and others’ work is invaluable in transforming your work from something good to something great.

Your future after the Literature and Creative Writing course offered by the University of Essex

Many of our creative writing students have gone on to successfully publish their work, notable recent alumni including:

• Ida Løkås, who won a major literary prize in Norway for The Beauty That Flows Past, securing a book deal
• Alexia Casale, whose novel Bone Dragon was published by Faber & Faber and subsequently featured on both the Young Adult Books of the Year 2013 list for The Financial Times, and The Independent’s Books of the year 2013: Children
• Elaine Ewert, recent graduate from our MA Wild Writing, placed second in the New Welsh Writing Awards
• Patricia Borlenghi, the founder of Patrician Press, which has published works by a number of our alumni
• Petra Mcqueen, who has written for The Guardian and runs creative writing courses
• Our graduates are also ideally prepared for careers in the media, education, publishing, advertising, and the film and theatre industries. Two particular areas in which our recent graduates have had recent success are publishing and the theatre. One of our former students is now in charge of editorial at a large publishing house, and another has just taken over running one of the country’s major theatres.