Course Directors:

Andrew Cowan (Director of Creative Writing)
Rebecca Stott (Creative and Critical Writing PhD)
Henry Sutton (Prose Fiction MA)
Lavinia Greenlaw (Poetry MA)
Val Taylor (Scriptwriting MA)
Kathryn Hughes (Biography and Creative Non-Fiction MA)
Steven Waters (English Literature with Creative Writing BA)

UEA was founded in the 1960s and since its inception the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing has paid particular attention to contemporary literature. Its staff include a number of well-known authors and critics. Many internationally renowned writers have lectured here, and a great number have been interviewed for the year-round International Literary Festival, including Martis Amis, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Doris Lessing, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Iris Murdoch, Salman Rushdie, Muriel Spark and Jeanette Winterson. Other writers, including David Lodge, Peter Reading, Paul Bailey, Ali Smith, Bernadine Evaristo, Helon Habila and Paul Muldoon, have held Writing Fellowships.

The Creative Writing MA, the first of its kind in the UK, was founded in 1970 by Angus Wilson and Malcolm Bradbury in the belief that there are a good number of young (and not so young) writers of originality and potential who would welcome the chance to develop their work on a postgraduate course within a university which emphasized the importance of contemporary writing. Until 1995, when Andrew Motion was appointed Professor of Creative Writing, the MA concentrated on Prose Fiction, reflecting the interests of those who taught it – Angus Wilson, Malcolm Bradbury, Angela Carter and Rose Tremain. Since 1996 we have also offered a Poetry MA, which runs parallel to the Prose course, and is based on a similar workshop structure. In 1998 a revised version of the Scriptwriting stream was introduced, and in 2000 an MA in Life Writing - now known as the MA in Biography and Creative Non-Fiction - was inaugurated by Lorna Sage and Janet Todd. Among the other writers to have taught on these programmes are W.G. Sebald, Michèle Roberts, Patricia Duncker, Denise Riley and Richard Holmes.

In 1990 the Jordanian/British writer Fadia Faqir became the UK's first PhD in Creative and Critical Writing, since when a thriving research programme has grown up in the School. Each of our Creative Writing faculty is engaged in supervising PhD students, and while the relationship between the creative and critical components of each project will vary, the emphasis is on ensuring that practice and critical understanding develop in tandem. Most of our research students will be given the opportunity to teach at undergraduate level, and many will go on to publish and/or work in the field. Recently the School introduced a number of scholarships to support particularly innovative research proposals.

Undergraduate Creative Writing at UEA began informally in the 1960s and continued until the English Literature with Creative Writing BA was introduced in 1995. This similarly stresses the importance of the relationship between the creative and the critical. The Creative Writing part of the degree typically comprises a third of the course, which is taught in seminar-workshops under the guidance of practising writers, including most of the MA tutors. Creative Writing modules are offered in each year of the BA, some compulsory and some optional. Those taken in third year are modelled on the MA and for a number of our most accomplished students the BA will act as a bridge into the MA.

Unlike the undergraduate programme, the MA does not function through exercises but by considering fiction as a form of aesthetic, psychological and cultural enquiry. Neither the Poetry nor Prose Fiction strand is primarily commercial in direction and neither teaches conventional genre forms or, in the conventional sense, marketability. The course is not intended for the beginner, making no claim to teach those who are not yet writing how to start writing. It is directed towards those who are committed to writing, who have already produced work, whether published or not, who have a strong formal and aesthetic curiosity, and who welcome the chance to develop their writing in a university atmosphere. Its founding assumption is that creative experiment merits the same commitment and deserves the same educational attention as do other arts like painting, dance and film. The Scriptwriting stream, however, takes a strong focus on writing for the contemporary drama production industries and upon the writer's knowledge and understanding of the production marketplace, hence the accreditation by Skillset.

Each of UEA's Creative Writing programmes is best seen as an opportunity to explore and develop literary intentions in relation to the wider social and literary context, to work under the pressure of deadlines, and to share the experience of writing with colleagues in a critical and creative atmosphere. Students need to have an honest, critical view of their own work and potential. The courses best suit those whose work is self-aware rather than instinctive. Of those who have taken a course here in the past, some have become well-known authors, others have entered journalism or the media, and others have gone into teaching. Many continue to write, but it is important to emphasise that literary success is never easy, and many writers never publish. Writing successfully needs strong gifts, considerable resilience, and a certain amount of luck. Nonetheless, an unrivalled proportion of our graduates have published their work, and excellent contacts are maintained with agents, publishers, and the professional theatre and film world.

A look at the work of some of our alumni – such as Naomi Alderman, Tash Aw, Trezza Azzopardi, Richard Beard, John Boyne, Tracy Chevalier, Andrew Cowan, Joe Dunthorne, Anne Enright, Diana Evans, Mohammed Hanif, Jane Harris, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Paul Murray, James Scudamore and Naomi Wood – might suggest something of the spirit and direction of Creative Writing at UEA, as well as its diversity. Andrew Miller, who graduated from the MA in 1990, was the winner of the 2011 Costa Book Award for his novel Pure. Christie Watson, who graduated in 2008, won the 2011 Costa First Novel Award for Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away. Anjali Joseph, who also graduated in 2008, was the winner of the Betty Trask Award and the Desmond Elliott Prize and was the co-winner of the Vodaphone Crossword Book Award for Sarawati Park. Kathryn Simmonds, who graduated in 2002, won the 2008 Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection with Sunday at the Skin Launderette. DW Wilson, who graduated in 2010, won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2011. Adam Foulds, who graduated in 2000, has in recent years won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Costa Poetry Award, a Somerset Maugham Award, the South Bank Show Literature Award, the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature.

In 2011 UEA's Creative Writing programme was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, the UK's most prestigious higher education award, in recognition of its continuing excellence in delivering innovative courses at a world-class level.