Malcolm Bradbury co-founded (with Angus Wilson) the UEA Creative Writing MA in 1970, the first course of its kind in the UK, and was its Director until his retirement in 1995. A Professor of American Studies, he was a prolific and influential literary scholar, publishing over forty books of non-fiction and criticism. In addition he wrote numerous screenplays for television, a large body of reviews and articles, and published seven novels, including The History Man (1975), which was serialised for BBC television, and Rates Of Exchange (1983), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He was awarded a CBE in 1991 for services to literature, and knighted in 2000. He died in 2000, aged 68.

Angela Carter taught the MA in Prose Fiction between 1980 and 1987, numbering Booker Prize-winners Kazuo Ishiguro and Anne Enright among her many pupils. She was one of the most influential and widely-studied of twentieth century writers, publishing poetry, plays, children’s books, three collections of critical writing, including Nothing Sacred (1992), five collections of short stories, including The Bloody Chamber (1979), and nine novels, including Nights at the Circus (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Wise Children (1991). Her second novel The Magic Toyshop (1987) and her short story The Company of Wolves (1984) were adapted for cinema. She died in 1992, aged 51.

Patricia Duncker was a Professor of Creative Writing and co-Director (with Michele Roberts) of the Prose Fiction MA between 2002 and 2006. A respected feminist academic and scholar she had previously taught Literature at the University of Aberystwyth and published a collection of critical essays Writing On The Wall in 2002. Her first novel Hallucinating Foucault (1996) won the McKitterick Prize and the Dillons First Fiction Award. She has subsequently published two collections of short stories, including Seven Tales of Sex and Death (2003) and five novels, including Miss Webster and Chérif (2007), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She is currently Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester University.

Richard Holmes was Professor of Biographical Studies and Director of the Lifewriting MA between 2001 and 2006 and is now one of UEA’s Distinguished Writing Fellows. His first book, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974), won a Somerset Maugham Award, and he has subsequently been awarded the Whitbread Book of the Year for Coleridge: Early Visions (1989), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Dr Johnson and Mr Savage (1993), and the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award for Coleridge: Darker Reflections (1998). Among his many other publications are Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985) and Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer (2000). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, and was awarded an OBE in 1992.

Paul Magrs was a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at UEA between 1997 and 2004, during which time he co-Directed the MA in Creative Writing with Professor Andrew Motion. He is the author of numerous novels for both adults and children, including Strange Boy (2002), Twin Freaks (2007), and several titles in the BBC Doctor Who series. He was co-editor of The Creative Writing Coursebook (2001). He currently teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Andrew Motion succeeded Malcolm Bradbury as Professor of Creative Writing in 1995 and was co-Director (with Paul Magrs) of the MA in Creative Writing until 2002, during which time he was appointed Poet Laureate, succeeding Ted Hughes. His poetry collections include Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984 (1984), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and Natural Causes (1987), which won the Dylan Thomas Award. He is the author of several acclaimed literary biographies, including The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit (1986), which won a Somerset Maugham Award, and Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (1993), which won the Whitbread Biography Award. He has also published two novels and a memoir, In The Blood (2006). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University.

Denise Riley was a Professor of English Literature and Director of the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry). Her books include War in the Nursery: Theories of Child and Mother, Am I That Name?: Feminism and the Category of "Women" in History, and The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony. She edited Poets on Writing: Britain 1970-1991 and co-edited, with Stephen Heath and Colin McCabe, the Language, Discourse and Society Series Reader. She has also published many collections of poetry, including Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Iain Sinclair and Douglas Oliver and Denise Riley: Selected Poems. Her most recent books are The Force of Language, with Jean-Jacques Lecercle, and Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect.

W.G. Sebald joined UEA in 1970 as a lecturer in German Literature and became Professor of European Literature in 1987. He was a founding Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) in 1989 and taught on the MA in Creative Writing from the mid-1990s until his death in a car crash in 2001, aged 57. Until he emerged as an internationally significant novelist with the publication of The Emigrants in 1996, he was known principally as a scholar of German and particularly Austrian literature. His other highly acclaimed and influential novels are Rings of Saturn (1999), Vertigo (2000) and Austerlitz (2001).

Rose Tremain graduated from UEA in 1967 and subsequently returned to teach on the Creative Writing MA between 1988 and 1995. She is now one of UEA’s Distinguished Writing Fellows. Her first novel, Sadler’s Birthday, was published in 1976 and among her many other acclaimed novels and short story collections are Restoration (1989), which won the Angel Literary Award and the Sunday Express Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Sacred Country (1992), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Fémina Etranger, Music and Silence (1999), which won the Whitbread Novel Award, The Colour (2004), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and The Road Home, which won the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. She was awarded a CBE in 2007.

Angus Wilson co-founded (with Malcom Bradbury) the UEA Creative Writing MA in 1970, the first course of its kind in the UK. A critic, novelist and short story writer, he taught widely in the United States before joining UEA in 1963. He became a Professor of English Literature in 1966, and retired in 1978. His first publication was a collection of short stories, The Wrong Set (1949). His first novel Hemlock and After (1952) was followed by six others, including Anglo Saxon Attitudes (1956) and Late Call (1964). He also published numerous non-fiction titles and was Chair of the Arts Council’s Literature Panel and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was knighted for services to literature in 1980, and died in 1991, aged 77.