Nobel Prize Writers
Nobel Prize Writers
Our creative writing courses ignite the imagination. They help literary giants, like UEA alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro to craft their storytelling skills.
Pioneers of creative writing since the 1960s, we created the first MA in Creative Writing in 1970. And it’s still the most prestigious Creative Writing programme in the UK today. Here, at the heart of Norwich, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature and home to the National Centre for Writing, we help talented writers from all over the world to develop their style, grow in confidence and hone their books, scripts, poems and novels.
Words can pack a punch. They can transport you places. Evoke memories. Change your thinking. And make you laugh and cry. At UEA, our students and colleagues collaborate, support one another and learn to write for all kinds of different genres.
We’re very proud of both our graduates and staff who include notable authors such as the late W.G. Sebald and Professor Rebecca Stott. Rebecca Stott won the 2017 Costa Prize for biography. Creative writing alumni range from Kazuo Ishiguro who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017 and Booker Prize winners Anne Enright and Ian McEwan. While alumni who have won the Costa Book/Whitbread Award include Rose Tremain, Andrew Miller, Tash Aw, Emma Healey, Susan Fletcher, Adam Foulds, Avril Joy and Christie Watson.
Our notable alumni also include actor, comedian and author Charlie Higson and screenwriter Deborah Davies who received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for The Favourite. She worked on an early draft of the script while studying here! We continue to lead the way with creative writing with the support of visiting lecturers like Margaret Atwood.
“Norwich is England’s first UNESCO City of Literature for good reason and this is in no small part due to UEA’s Creative Writing courses. Nothing could make us prouder at UEA than a Nobel Prize winning alumnus and I’m absolutely delighted for Kazuo Ishiguro.” - Professor David Richardson, UEA Vice-Chancellor
We also helped to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. It was jointly awarded to US politician Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to which UEA has contributed more extensively than any other university in the world.
