Creative and Critical Writing PhD

If you are considering writing an extended work of fiction (a novel or a collection of short stories) or a collection of poetry or a drama or film script, then UEA can offer three-year supervision, rich archival, artistic and library resources, the expertise of novelists, poets, translators, memoir writers and academics, many of whom work across several genres and whose work is interdisciplinary in nature, as well as the opportunity to study and write within one of the most eminent and internationally esteemed Creative Writing programmes in the world and in one of the oldest and most literary cities in Britain.

Students who enrol on this programme submit a thesis of between 80,000 and 100,000 words (the length of poetry collections is negotiated between the student and the supervisory team) which is made up of two related parts - one creative, one critical. The ratio between the creative and the critical components varies, but the creative part will usually be the longer; the ratio can be anything between 80:20 and 50:50. The two parts are parallel and should relate to each other in mutually illuminating and original ways. The intellectual discipline involved in writing a novel or a collection of poetry or a script is considerable whether it has to do with researching a subject, editorial analysis of a draft, or the question of deciding on an appropriate form. Whilst we expect the critical essay to be intellectually disciplined, carefully researched and informed by scholarship, as we would expect of an academic PhD, we also encourage our Creative-Critical PhD students to experiment with voice, form and rhetorical modes so as to challenge long-established critical conventions.

Students who undertake the PhD programme at UEA come from many different backgrounds. All will have had considerable experience in creative writing. A few are established novelists or poets or playwrights who want to undertake a particular project within the academy with the resources of libraries and reading groups and the mentorship of both writers and academics of the highest calibre. Others seek to complete a PhD so that they can apply for creative writing teaching positions in universities to help support a writing life. Others will be looking for employment in publishing or editing. At UEA your supervisor and supervisory team will try to ensure that the PhD programme is tailored to your professional interests and aspirations as well as ensuring that you flourish and develop as a writer.

Students have the opportunity to attend MA classes within the School (though not the Creative Writing MA workshops which are restricted to Creative Writing MA students only); these MAs include modules such as Novel History, European Gothic, Culture and Its Discontents, Critical Theories of the Western Self, The Modernist Novel, The Possibility of Fiction: Experiment and Tradition after Beckett, Adaptation and Interpretation and The Persistence of the Aesthetic. We are also in the process of establishing opportunities for work experience and for research-related travel.

The emphasis we place on the relationship between the creative and the critical components at UEA is designed to ensure that you develop as an intellectual as well as a writer, that you continue to develop your understanding of your own writing as part of a literary critical tradition and that like many successful writers you will be able to write confident and articulate essays about your own work or that of others and that you have everything you need to embark on a writing life. If the critical essay project you want to write crosses discipline boundaries - and many do because we encourage it - we will do our best to assemble a supervisory team that provides expertise across those boundaries.

We usually have around 70 PhD students in the School at any one time and more than half of these are Critical-Creative PhD students which creates a lively, supportive and creative atmophere in which students read for each other. All students are required to attend a Research Skills training programme and in addition to present their work in progress to the dedicated Creative-Critical PhD programme of seminars which runs all year round led by Professor Giles Foden.

To study for a Creative-Critical PhD at UEA you do not need to be published, but you should already have gained a Creative Writing MA, MLitt or MFA. Places on the programme are awarded on the quality of the proposal and of the sample writing, the track record of the student and the availability of a supervisory match.

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