Creative Writing BA(Hons)

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Why creative writing at Brighton?

• Staff are all active writers – you will learn from published novelists, poets and screenwriters
• Strong local publishing connections - we organise a programme of visiting writers and publishing professionals. Take a look at some of our prizes and partnerships
• Scrivener series of talks giving you the chance to speak to a professional writer about their work
• Focus on employability - we ensure you will graduate as an emerging writer with a strong skillset
• Alumni making a difference - graduates from our programmes include Paris Lees, Merci Roberts, Munroe Bergdorf and Tanaka Mhisi
• Excellent student support and a warm and encouraging community
• Weekly roundup of writing competitions and opportunities to encourage you to promote your work and consider future careers
• Workshops and spoken word events help you find your writing voice

Year 1

All students study the same modules in year 1, where you will develop your awareness of writing genres and work with local writers.

You will learn through lectures, seminars and workshops as well as small group and individual tutorials.

Modules

• Narratives of (Un)belonging

  Explore the cultural and critical concepts of belonging and unbelonging. You'll situate yourself as an emerging, socially responsible writer in the wider world by engaging with diverse writings that explore themes of migration and movement, home and displacement, search for a community, and our relationship to the environment and different spaces.

• The World, the Text and the Critic

  Taking inspiration from Edward Said’s book The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), this module enables you to explore some of the key debates in contemporary literary studies. Organised around decolonial, feminist, queer, ecocritical and other approaches to texts, you'll develop critical writing skills and knowledge of social, cultural and political contexts in the interpretation of literary works and the wider world. 

• Writers on Writing

  Explore the concept of a professional writerly identity, and consider a ‘writing life’ in personal, local and global terms. Through studying and by contact with professional writers, you will investigate writing as self-expression, craft, process and profession; curating a writerly identity/ persona; developing your writing towards your future career; and the writing life and its implications on the global stage, for example as an act of resistance to inequalities.

• Storying The Self

  This module will introduce you to practices of storying the self in writing and digital media. Through creating a first person story combining audio script, music and still image, you will engage with the expressive complexities of autobiographical representation. The module will also give you the creative writing tools to experiment with storying the self in a variety of written genre.

• Staging Politics

  How might theatre engage audiences with the politics of class, race, gender, sexuality and the environment? You'll examine a range of plays in context, exploring how provocative stories develop through characterisation, stage directions, dialogue and dramatic action. Learn to think critically and creatively about theatrical texts and how to write scripts for stage in inclusive collaborations with your peers.

• Brighton Writes

  Brighton is a vibrant and unique place that has impacted on British and European culture, as well being at the forefront of social changes since the eighteenth-century. This module is a literary and cultural exploration of Brighton as a place. You will engage and connect with Brighton’s history, literary culture and your own creative writing practice. The module benefits from several city trips, which will bring learning materials to life.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through Student View.

Pier Review, a literary magazine run by our students, teachers and alumni

Year 2

There are placement opportunities available in the second year as well as field trips to theatres, museums, schools and community organisations. You are also welcome to study abroad after your second year.

You'll also choose to stay with the broad Creative Writing degree, or to specialise in wellbeing or comics and graphic novels.

Core modules

• Genres
• Stories that Transform: Reading and Writing for Change

Creative writing

• Research and Practice
• Professional Placement and Practice

Creative writing with wellbeing

• Critical Psychology
• Mental Health and Distress
• Professional Placement and Practice

Creative writing with comics and graphic novels

• Comics, Cultures and Themes
• Image and Text: The Language of Comics and Graphic Novels
• Research and Practice

Options*

• American Literature**
• Contemporary Narratives and Society
• Documentary Storytelling: Theory and Practice
• Early Modern Literature
• Introduction to Journalism
• Journalism
• Literature and Art History
• Modernism and Heritage**
• Poetry and Process
• Power and Persuasion
• Queer Writings
• Reading the Graphic Novel
• Studying Travel Writing
• Twentieth-Century Literary Experiments
• Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory**
• Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen

You can also choose option modules from across our humanities and arts subjects.

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

** available to students choosing the comics and graphic novels pathway

Final year

In the final year you take two core modules and choose from a selection of options. Publishers Epoque Press award a prize for the best dissertation.

Core modules

Creative writing, and wellbeing pathway

• Dissertation
• Brighton Rocks: Final Year Show

Options*

• (Re)Viewing Shakespeare
• Adaptations
• Analysing Big Data: Quantitative Methods in Language Research
• Apocalypse, Utopia and Dystopia
• Autobiography and the Screen
• Autoethnography
• Brighton Rocks
• Citizen Journalism: Theory and Practice
• Community Placement: Theory in Practice
• Conflict, Migration, Borders
• Creative Writing Project
• Culture Wars: Class, Race, Gender and the Politics of Taste
• European Literatures and Film
• From Script to Screen
• Gothic: Texts and Contexts
• Literature and Philosophy
• Literature and the World Wars
• Popular Culture: Europe and Beyond
• Post-colonial Literatures
• Post-war American Literature
• Reading and Writing Landscape
• Restoration Drama
• Russian Literature
• Victorian Sexualities
• Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory
• Writing the Contemporary

Specialist wellbeing pathway options* 

• Community Wellbeing and Social Justice
• Counselling Skills and the Therapeutic Relationship
• Critical Addiction Studies
• Cyberpsychology
• Ecopsychology
• Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Children
• Psychology of Poverty
• Sexualities

Specialist comics and graphic novels pathway options*

• Contemporary Global Literatures
• Creative Writing Project
• English Language Teaching
• European Literature and Film
• Gothic: Texts and Contexts
• Literature and Social Change
• Postcolonial Literatures
• Reading and Writing Landscape
• Script to Screen
• Victorian Sexualities

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Choose to explore wellbeing

Choose to follow this pathway at the end of year 1 and graduate with the degree title: Creative Writing with Wellbeing BA(Hons).

You'll explore specialist wellbeing-related modules alongside core creative writing modules and choose option modules in the subjects that interest you most.

You will link your knowledge of wellbeing to the craft of writing and consider texts and your own work in relation to political, social, cultural and medical theories. You will particularly focus on diversity and global challenges. You will identify underrepresented stories and question their absence, as well as thinking ethically and sensitively about addressing gaps in literature and writing that your work can fill.

Events such as our wellbeing walks will consider the impact of the outdoors and place on your writing and think about how eco-writing can raise awareness and spark dialogues. Our tutors will help you to develop techniques and skills involved in storytelling in a range of genres and encourage you to think about how your writing can and will impact on the world and how you can be part of, and also lead, better conversations about living well.

Through the university’s Centre for Arts and Wellbeing you will be connected with the latest national and international research and events that speak directly to your subjects. You will be encouraged to think how you can contribute to future work in these transformative and vital fields.

Choose to explore comics and graphic novels

Choose to follow this pathway at the end of year 1 and graduate with the degree title: Creative Writing with Comics and Graphic Novels BA(Hons).

Comics and graphic novels entertain and inform through a powerful and dynamic combination of visual art and narrative storytelling – and their cultural impact means they are recognised as an important art form. They are used to explore subjects from politics to mental health, social inequality to science, fantasy to fiction in ways that convey emotions, action and atmosphere with broad and inclusive appeal.

On this innovative specialist pathway you will be encouraged to experiment, whether that is creating long-form graphic novels or comic strips, engaging with subjects that excite and inspire you.

Our staff have extensive writing and publishing expertise in the field and they will develop your skills and knowledge, ensuring you understand specific storytelling techniques that create an emotional impact on the reader. You will also learn aspects of design such as panel layouts, visual pacing and composition.

As a student, you will be engaging with this evolving art form in a vibrant city where creativity is celebrated, benefitting from our connections to organisations and events in which you can participate and share your work.

Lab facilities

Mithras House is home to all our School of Humanities and Social Science courses. It has a series of ‘labs’, which may be used for teaching on your course or in your independent research work.

Life lab
A comfortable space with lounge furniture intended for qualitative research with larger groups. Due to its relaxed layout and naturalistic environment, the space is suited to research using focus groups, research using observation-based methods and child research.

The space is also used for teaching on some social science courses, as well as for dissertation research for projects.
 
City lab
A space designed for collaborative student learning. It is used by students and staff involved in the university’s Global Challenges programme, our collective mission to contribute towards solutions to tackling the pressing issues facing our world.

Design lab
A space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, which are used in some teaching on our History of Art and Design courses. It has the space and equipment to work on textile projects. Displays created by students on these programmes are on view in the social spaces of the building.

Stats lab
A specialist workspace with computing equipment for statistical analysis and projects involving video and audio editing software. The lab is accessible as a study space to students on psychology courses. 

It is also available to students studying courses involving video and audio recording and editing, such as politics degrees and our creative writing programmes. The stats lab contains eight soundproof booths for recording or transcribing interviews undertaken as part of dissertation research.  

VR and eye tracking lab
This lab is used for psychological research, specifically eye-tracking research and virtual reality research. Equipment includes an electroencephalography (EEG) headset and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) equipment.

Placements

A core module in year 2 of the creative writing and the wellbeing pathways enables you to gain professional experience in industries such as publishing, broadcasting, social media marketing, PR and the charity sector. 

Recent placement hosts include:

• Action Medical Research
• Action Tutoring
• Airstream Photo Booth
• Brighton Dome and Festival
• British Forces Broadcasting Services
• Epoque Press
• Factory Films
• The Old Market Theatre
• Little Green Pig
• Men’s Health Magazine
• Prsnt.

In year 3 the Community Placement module is available for all pathways to choose. It is aimed at building your professional experience through 30 to 50 hours of voluntary work with a not-for-profit or community organisation. The placement is assessed and contributes to your degree.

Meet the team

Dr Bea Hitchman is a novelist whose work focuses on gender, queer writing and historical fiction. Her 2013 novel Petite Mort was nominated for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Prize, the Polari Prize, the HWA Debut Novel Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and serialised as a ten-part Radio 4 drama. Her second novel, All of You Every Single One (2021) was one of Vogue’s Best Novels of 2022, and was nominated for the Polari Prize and HWA Prize. Read novelist and writing tutor Beatrice Hitchman's staff profile.

Read a Q+A with Bea Hitchman where she talks about her career and how she got into writing novels and teaching.

Dr Craig Jordan-Baker is a writer of drama, fiction and non-fiction. His drama has been widely performed and his first novel The Nacullians was published in 2020 and his most recent work If the River is Hidden (2022) is hybrid work combining poetry and lyrical prose. He was the winner of the 2018 Excellence in Facilitating and Empowering Learning Award. You can read more about Craig's interests and background on his staff profile. You can read more about novelist and creative writing tutor Dr Craig Jordan-Baker on his staff profile.

Dr Jess Moriarty researches in the field of teaching writing practice, especially in auto-ethnographical academic writing and in creative writing with undergraduates. Another winner of the Teaching Excellence award, she is also co-founder of Work Write Live, which provides a range of writing short courses and volunteering opportunities for students to develop vocational and academic skills. You can read more about writer and creative-writing tutor Dr Jess Moriarty on her staff profile.

Read a Q+A with Jess Moriarty where she talks about her career and how she got into writing novels and teaching.

Dr John McCullough is a Costa-shortlisted, Polari prize-winning poet who focuses on mental health, loss, the body, queer politics, queer history and Brighton as a centre for unique LGBT+ subcultures. He has written three collections: The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011) which won the Polari First Book Prize and was a Book of the Year for The Independent and a summer read for The Observer. His second, Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016) was shortlisted for the Ledbury-Forte prize and was a summer read for The Guardian. His latest collection, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019), was shortlisted for the Costa. Read more about poet and creative-writing tutor Dr John McCullough on his staff profile.

Julie Everton is a playwright and script editor. She teaches drama, script writing, and screenwriting. Her research includes writing about real events/people, models of script development and autoethnography. You can read more about playwright and writing tutor Julie Everton on her staff profile.

Dr Barbara Chamberlain teaches modules in creative writing, English language, media and literature and include cinema, landscape writing, intercultural communication, teacher training and comics. She co-curates the Graphic Brighton symposium which brings together comics scholars, creators, publishers and readers. Read more about Dr Barbara Chamberlin in her staff profile.

Dr Craig Jordan-Baker

Reckless Paper Birds is the Costa-nominated book by lecturer Dr John McCullough.

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2024–25.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate and postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

Campus where this course is taught

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