Creative Writing: Innovation and Experiment

What about after uni?

EMPLOYMENT

Whether you aspire to literary greatness or you’re keen to pursue further study, our master’s in creative writing innovation and experiment will give you the tools and training you need to take the first step in your professional career.

While the aim of this course is to encourage you to challenge and develop yourself creatively as a writer, it offers much more besides that. Alongside establishing successful careers as creative writers, many of our graduates go on to secure professional roles in publishing, teaching and fiction writing, as well as arts administration and journalism. 

FURTHER STUDY

Postgraduate research in Creative Writing is co-ordinated by the English Literature, Language and Creative Practice Research group in the Arts Media and Communication Research Centre, headed by Dr Scott Thurston. The group explores hybrid and inter-disciplinary ways of working and in our examination of marginal, experimental and emergent practices. We are concerned with looking at the overlooked and teasing out readings of neglected and/or transgressive authors and cultural practices. From looking at writing conflict in Northern Ireland to Victorian Sensation fiction, from discontented minds in Early Modern Drama to the representation of serial killers in film and fiction, from African modernism to experimental poetry, from the hidden meanings of place names to discourse analysis – our work is searching, critically-engaged and culturally relevant.

A key strength of the group is in the practice and study of innovative writing, covering experimental and literary fiction, young adult fiction, innovative poetry, visual text, scriptwriting, devising and directing for stage, performance, adaptation, autobiography and translation.

Recent successes include:

• Dan Lovatt’s regular articles for  Fourth Floor, and selection of his theatre play for a residency at Kings Arms during Manchester Fringe Festival
• Qudsia Akhtar’s first collection accepted with Verve Poetry Press of work written during the MA and success in obtaining AHRC funding for a PhD at Salford
• Chrissi Nerantzi’s blog, including discussion of her experience of the Creative Writing MA 
• Jazmine Linklater’s work in the marketing department of Carcanet Press; 
• Kayleigh McGuire’s apprenticeship with the Arts Council; 
• John Mansell (writer name John Blakemore) ‘What Love is’ in Purple Reign anthology, Erbaccce Press, 2019
• Leanne Bridgewater, Confessions of a Cyclist, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press:
• Richard Barrett, Hugz, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press:
• Nia Davies’ first full-length poetry collection with high-profile publisher Bloodaxe Books.
• Nigel Wood and Joanne Langton co-editing The Dark Would anthology of Language Art with Phil Davenport.
• Leanne Bridgewater’s work as a librarian in Coventry and publication of her first full-length collection with The Knives Forks and Spoons Press.
• Richard Barrett as widely-published poet and editor of Happy Books.
• Stephen Emmerson as a well-published poet with work from the if p then q press and co-editor of the magazine and small press BLART books.
• Jazmine Linklater’s first collection for Dock Road Press.
• Joanne Langton’s work as editor with The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, and current post teaching English in Mexico (she also published her first collection with KFS).

Many of these writers have performed at The Other Room poetry reading series in Manchester (2008-2018)