BA (Hons) English Literature with Creative Writing
Key Details
- Attendance
- Full Time
- Award
- Degree of Bachelor of Arts
- UCAS Course Code
- Q3W8
- Entry Requirements
- AAA
- Course Length
- 3 years
- Course Start Date
- September 2023
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Why you should choose us
Of graduates go on to work and/or study within 15 months after the course
Course Overview
What will you say? Can you pin your ideas with words, create a world in which a reader can lose herself, discover another perspective—and emerge changed?
Immerse yourself in the written word and a thriving community of writers, as you hone your writing craft. Learn from practising, accomplished writers who will guide you in developing your voice. Sharpen your ability to sculpt language, move, and surprise the reader, build worlds, articulate the inexpressible. As you do so, plunge into literature in English from around the world, past and present, finding out how writers have expanded literary possibilities and rewritten conventions to make art of their lived experience and imaginary worlds. Become a more discerning and attentive reader and writer.
Turn the page – all yours – what will you write?
Our BA English Literature with Creative Writing is ranked 6th for Creative Writing by 'The Complete University Guide 2023'.
‘Good readers make good writers’ is the ethos of this course. You develop your craft as a writer under the supervision of our world-renowned novelists, poets and playwrights while benefitting from our first-class literature teaching. Your creative and literary training enhance one another. You’re able to draw on the wealth of literature you’ve been reading to inspire your writing, and your understanding of how literature works is deepened by writing it yourself.
The teaching of creative writing in the UK began at UEA more than fifty years ago, and we are still widely seen as the home of creative writing in this country. You will be studying at a university rich in famous creative writing alumni, including Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan and Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Whatever kind of writing you love the most, you’ll develop it over the course of your degree by working closely with our many practising writers in seminars and workshops. In your study of English literature, you’ll have the chance to discover a wealth of writers from the ancient classical past right up to poets and novelists writing now. You’ll explore diverse literary traditions from across the globe, and you’ll tackle a heady mix of genres, which currently range from the gothic to children’s literature, crime writing to Latin American fiction, early modern women’s writing to biography.
Whichever modules you choose to study, you’ll be taught by our world-leading writers and critics. UEA’s School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing is famous for innovation in teaching and for cutting-edge research – that’s why in the most recent Times Higher Education Analysis (REF2021), UEA was ranked 19th in the UK for the quality of its research in English Language and Literature.
Norwich is an extraordinary place in which to be a writer. It’s England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, awarded in recognition of the city’s vivid literary heritage and vibrant contemporary writing scene, and home to the National Centre for Writing. You’ll immerse yourself in this community, and you might find yourself sharing your work with a packed audience of students and professional writers at our UEA Live: New Writing series, or attending literary festival events with internationally renowned literary figures.
We say that UEA is the place where literature lives – when you join the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, you’ll join a unique and supportive community of critics, writers, and drama practitioners, who bring literature to life every day. You can find out more the activities in our School by following us on Instagram.
Placement Year and Study Abroad
You have the option to apply to study abroad for one semester of your second year. Study abroad is a wonderfully enriching life experience – you’ll develop confidence and adaptability, and will have the chance to deepen your understanding of writing while learning about another culture. At UEA, you’ll be surrounded by the many students we welcome from around the world to study with us.
For further details, visit the Study Abroad section of our website.
Study and Modules
Structure
During your first year, you’ll take two bespoke Creative Writing modules. These are your creative writing boot camps and will develop your range of skills as a writer.
The first semester is all about cultivating your craft, testing out the possibilities of different forms and techniques, pushing your boundaries as a writer, and using writing exercises to help you generate material.
In the second semester, you'll experiment with more avant-garde possibilities and different genres, taking risks, pushing your own boundaries as a writer, and you will work on techniques for adapting writing for stage or screen. You’ll also improve your skills as a reader of literary texts in our Reading Now and Slow Reading modules, and get to grips with the span of English Literature in our Reading Literature in History module, while Writing Across Borders will enable you to explore the global history of English, from its origins in multilingual medieval society to the extraordinary literatures which are still being forged today from the legacies of colonialism and its resistance.
Compulsory Modules
Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.
Teaching and Learning
Teaching
Nurtured by our world-leading creative writing tutors (in seminars of c. 15 people), you'll start to get to grips with the fundamentals of creative writing, including strategies for creating character, writing dialogue, determining mood, and maintaining atmosphere. Lectures on literature will surprise you with new ideas, and seminar discussions led by your tutor will shape your thinking about what you've read that week. You'll meet your academic adviser who'll support you through your whole degree with everything from choice of modules to launching your career.
Independent Learning
You’ll spend time working on your own creative writing and reading some extraordinary books, with a framework of guided tasks to help you get the most out of them. You'll explore the library, discovering a wealth of new resources, and you'll throw yourself into the whirlwind of extra-curricular creative writing events and activities. By the end of this year, you'll be equipped with the fundamental skills you’ll need for your literary and creative journey.
Assessment
Assessment
Throughout your degree, all modules in English Literature and Creative Writing have no exams – we believe that the best way to express your thoughts about literature and to show off your creative development is through carefully crafted pieces of written coursework. On the creative side, you'll start by writing your own prose and poetry, developing fundamental skills in drafting, keeping a writer's notebook, and submitting to deadlines, before embarking on more experimental exercises, which invite you to take greater risks in your writing. In your studies of literature, you'll develop renewed enthusiasm for writing academic essays, and express your thinking in a diverse variety of forms, like reviews or personal reflective writing.
Feedback
You'll receive feedback on your writing (creative and critical) from your tutors (e.g. in one-to-one tutorials) and your peers. Feedback on assessed work will be returned within 20 working days (after it has been carefully marked and moderated). As your first year does not count toward your overall degree result, it's the perfect moment to experiment and take risks.
Structure
You’ll begin to focus your creative writing on a particular form (or two), choosing from prose, poetry and scriptwriting modules, as well as options in publishing and journalism.
You’ll share your writing with your peers and with a published author in our creative writing workshops, receiving feedback and learning how to give constructive criticism to your peers, too. As a literary critic, you will be able to choose from all the available literature modules, gaining a grounding in a variety of literary periods. You might also choose to experiment with our innovative creative-critical modules, where the reading and writing of literature go hand-in-hand.
Over the course of this year and the next, you’ll also take at least two modules in literature written before 1789. This ensures you graduate as a writer who has a real awareness of how your work emerges from and reacts to (or against!) the traditions of English literature.
Optional A Modules
(Min Credits: 60, Max Credits: 80)Optional B Modules
(Min Credits: 20, Max Credits: 40)Optional C Modules
(Min Credits: 20, Max Credits: 40)Optional D Modules
(Min Credits: 0, Max Credits: 20)Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.
Teaching and Learning
Teaching
Your creative work will now be taken to the next level through the 'workshopping' process (pioneered in the UK by UEA), where you'll get feedback on your writing from your peers under the direction of one of our creative writing tutors, and learn the art of offering constructive critique of your peers’ writing, too. Lectures and seminars will immerse you in particular eras of literature, and you'll take seminars in more 'real-world' topics like journalism or publishing (using our state-of-the-art Media Suite), or you might take a placement as part of a Humanities-wide module.
Independent Learning
You'll deepen your confidence in the craft of both creative and critical writing, and you'll finish the year with a real sense of how your degree might open out into future careers.
Assessment
Assessment
You'll continue to submit written coursework for all your creative writing and literature modules. Your creative writing will flourish as you produce more substantial pieces of prose (e.g. a 1250-word short story or longer 2000-word narrative), portfolios of poetry, or scripts for stage or screen (c.20-30 minutes in length), and write reflective pieces to understand better your own creative processes. You'll take your critical essay writing to new heights in projects of around 2500 words, and you might experiment with creative criticism, for instance by writing a short story to show off what you've learnt about that form. You may take one module from another discipline this year, which might lead you to take an exam, but in practice the vast majority of our students are assessed by 100% written coursework.
Feedback
You'll continue to have the support and feedback of all your tutors, and your creative work will be deepened by your immersion in the workshop environment, where you receive feedback from your peers and learn to give feedback on their work, an enormously valuable skill in many careers.
Structure
In your final-year creative writing modules, you will focus intensively on your own practice. You’ll take a workshop, modelled on our world-famous Creative Writing MA. This will give you the chance to develop your work in a particular form: prose, poetry, or scriptwriting. You’ll also have the chance to write a creative writing dissertation in which you produce a substantial piece of poetry, prose or script, with one-to-one support from a tutor.
On the literature side, you’ll choose from a dazzling array of specialist modules, led by the research of our individual academics – currently we offer topics covering everything from the global Middle Ages to contemporary children’s literature. Modules are carefully ordered into two option ranges to give you the chance to study literature in specific historical contexts and to explore genres or concepts across time. Or you might choose to write a dissertation on an aspect of English literature of your choice, working one-on-one with a specialist tutor as your supervisor.
Optional A Modules
(Credits: 30)Optional B Modules
(Min Credits: 0, Max Credits: 30)Optional C Modules
(Min Credits: 30, Max Credits: 90)Optional D Modules
(Min Credits: 0, Max Credits: 60)Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.
Teaching and Learning
Teaching
Our creative writing team will mentor you through 3-hour workshops focusing on a particular form of your choice (poetry/prose/script), and by working with you individually to complete your creative dissertation (if you choose that option). Alongside this, you'll have the chance to explore cutting-edge literary topics in real depth, in 3-hour seminars taught by specialists passionate about their subject.
Independent Learning
You'll bring together all the skills and confidence you've developed in critical and creative writing to master the forms of writing and fields of literary study that have come to matter to you the most.
Assessment
Assessment
You'll continue to be assessed by 100% written coursework. Your participation in another workshop will allow you to complete even more ambitious portfolios of writing (e.g. 3000 words of prose or 12-15 pages of poetry), and a creative dissertation will become the culmination of your achievements as a writer. You'll perfect the craft of critical essay writing in equally substantial projects (3500-5000 words), and if you wish you might continue to experiment with the forms in which you express your critical ideas, writing Shakespearean sonnets or experimenting with the new boundary-defying genre of ‘auto-fiction’.
Feedback
All the feedback you've received enables you to graduate with highly developed skills in writing and argument across a host of forms and for an array of audiences, and with an ability to give sensitive but incisive critique of others' work. These are all transferable skills hugely valued by employers.
Entry Requirements
- A Levels
- AAA including English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law. If you are taking an EPQ and three A-levels, we may offer you a one grade reduction on our advertised typical offer, if you achieve an A in the EPQ.
- T Levels
- Not accepted
- BTEC
- DDD alongside A-level grade A in English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law. Excludes BTEC Public Services, BTEC Uniformed Services and BTEC Business Administration
- Scottish Highers
- AAAA plus Scottish Advanced Higher at grade B in English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law
- Scottish Advanced Highers
- BBB including English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law
- Irish Leaving Certificate
- 6 subjects at H2 including English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law
- Access to HE Diploma
- Humanities and Social Sciences Pathway accepted. Pass Access to HE Diploma with Distinction in 45 credits at Level 3
- International Baccalaureate
- 34 including HL 6 in English Literature, or one of the subjects listed below: English Language and Literature, English Language, History, Ancient History, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Classical Civilisation, Classical Studies, Politics, Government and Politics, Psychology, Sociology, Drama, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Media Studies, Psychology or Law
- GCSE
- You are required to have GCSE Mathematics and English Language at a minimum of Grade C or Grade 4
- English Foreign Language
Applications from students whose first language is not English are welcome. We require evidence of proficiency in English (including writing, speaking, listening and reading):
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IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 5.5 in all components) for year 1 entry
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IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in all components) for year 2 entry
We also accept a number of other English language tests. Review our English Language Equivalencies for a list of example qualifications that we may accept to meet this requirement.
If you do not yet meet the English language requirements for this course, INTO UEA offer a variety of English language programmes which are designed to help you develop the English skills necessary for successful undergraduate study:
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- Interviews
- Most applicants will not be called for an interview and a decision will be made via UCAS Track. However, for some applicants an interview will be requested. Where an interview is required the Admissions Service will contact you directly to arrange a time.
- Deferred Entry
- We welcome applications from students who have already taken or intend to take a gap year. We believe that a year between school and university can be of substantial benefit. You are advised to indicate your reason for wishing to defer entry on your UCAS application.
- Intakes
- This course is open to UK and International applicants. The annual intake is in September each year.
Additional Information or Requirements
UEA are committed to ensuring that Higher Education is accessible to all, regardless of their background or experiences. One of the ways we do this is through our contextual admissions schemes.
We welcome and value a wide range of alternative qualifications. If you have a qualification which is not listed here, please contact us via Admissions Enquiries.
If you do not have an A-Level or equivalent qualification in one of the subjects listed above, once you have submitted your UCAS form we may then contact you to ask you to submit a short analysis of a passage of a literary text in support of your application.
If you do not meet the academic requirements for direct entry, you may be interested in one of our Foundation Year programmes
Important note
Once enrolled onto your course at UEA, your progression and continuation (which may include your eligibility for study abroad, overseas experience, placement or year in industry opportunities) is contingent on meeting the assessment requirements which are relevant to the course on which you are enrolled.
International Requirements
We accept many international qualifications for entry to this course. View our International Students pages for specific information about your country.
INTO University of East Anglia
If you do not meet the academic and/or English language requirements for direct entry our partner, INTO UEA offers progression on to this undergraduate degree upon successful completion of a preparation programme. Depending on your interests, and your qualifications you can take a variety of routes to this degree:
International Foundation in Business, Economics, Society and Culture (for Year 1 entry to UEA)
International Foundation in Humanities and Law (for Year 1 entry to UEA)
Special Entry Requirements
Candidates who are shortlisted will be asked to provide a sample of their creative writing: we ask for around 5 pages of work, which can be on any subject and in any genre of the candidate's choice. Most choose to send poetry, prose, or a mixture of the two.
Fees and Funding
Tuition Fees
View our information for Tuition Fees.
Scholarships and Bursaries
We are committed to ensuring that costs do not act as a barrier to those aspiring to come to a world leading university and have developed a funding package to reward those with excellent qualifications and assist those from lower income backgrounds. View our range of Scholarships for eligibility, details of how to apply and closing dates.
Course Related Costs
View our information about Additional Course Fees.
How to Apply
Apply for this course through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS), using UCAS Hub.
UCAS Hub is a secure online application system that allows you to apply for full-time undergraduate courses at universities and colleges in the United Kingdom.
Your application does not have to be completed all at once. Register or sign in to UCAS to get started.
Once you submit your completed application, UCAS will process it and send it to your chosen universities and colleges.
The Institution code for the University of East Anglia is E14.
View our guide to applying through UCAS for useful tips, key dates and further information:
Employability
After the Course
You could go on to work as a novelist or scriptwriter, or go into many careers in arts, media, publishing, politics, charities and NGOs, teaching or the commercial sector. You will be a first-rate writer, equipped with skills of critical reading, independence, time management, team work, and more; in an increasingly text-based world these skills are highly valued by employers. You’ll also be well placed to study for a postgraduate degree, including one of our world-famous Creative Writing MAs.
Our Careers Service is here to support you in launching your career by advising with CV writing, internships, and much more. Every year we run an event, Working with Words, where you’ll have the chance to meet and hear from successful UEA alumni from across the creative industries.
UEA also has its own in-house publishing project, Egg Box, along with many other exciting initiatives that give you opportunities to turn your love of writing into a foundation for your future career.
Careers
A degree at UEA will prepare you for a wide variety of careers. We've been ranked 1st for Job Prospects by StudentCrowd in 2022.
Examples of careers you could enter include:
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Freelance writer
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Publishing
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Journalist
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Media
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Marketing
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Teaching