Creative Writing MA (PGCert PGDip)

International equivalencies

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Why study with us?

• Chance to develop as a portfolio writer and creative practitioner – somebody who can apply good writing to real-world scenarios and work to specific briefs

• A transformative experience that goes beyond looking to get your first novel published, so you can explore copywriting and publishing while nurturing your passion for storytelling

• Guest lectures from publishers and professional writers including Mark Radcliffe and Isabel Ashdown, who runs the Prose Fiction module

• Links with local publishers, writers and creative companies, with placements available across Brighton

• Theatre visits, open mic nights and exciting events, including a short story slam at Brighton festival and writing workshops in Bucharest

• Online journal and in-house creative anthology for you to share your work with other students and the wider community

University of Brighton Literature Society (BULS) Open Mic Night

Areas of study

You will be able to tailor your MA studies to reflect an interest in writing practice, literary theory, community engagement or any combination of these.

We identify the range of modules as intrinsic to catering to diverse creative and intellectual needs and understand that triggers for writing and creative practice can stem from a wide range of places and fields of study.

We have specific modules dedicated to engaging students with the wider Brighton community and local creative industries where they will become a writer in residence and work to link their individual creative practice with a professional scenario.

You will be able to identify teaching and learning opportunities that inspire your creative work and apply this to your professional, academic and personal development and planning.

Syllabus

Core modules

• Practising Rhetoric: The History of Good Storytelling
• Creative Writing: Craft and Creative Practice
• Research Skills and Training
• Dissertation

Optional modules

• Prose Fiction
• Creativity module: Placement
• The Publishing Process
• Poetry: Theory and Craft
• Writing the City
• The Ethics of Fiction
• Twenty-first Century Literature
• Performing Gender
• Knowing Through Writing
• Holocaust Memory
• Aesthetics and Philosophy
• Cultural Theory
• History Making and the Screen Archive South
• Grammar and the English Language
• Memory and Identity in Postcolonial Cultures
• Cultural Memory in Ireland
• Gender, Family and Empire
• Screenwriting
• Auto/Biographical Narrative
• Visual Narrative

• Cultures of Multimedia Authoring and Web Design
• Critical and Media Concepts
• Issues and Debates: Introduction to Critical Arts Practice
• Traditions of Critical Theory
• Critical Readings
• Moral Thought and Practice
• Globalisation and Culture
• Aesthetics and Philosophy
• Foundations of Critical Theory
• Meaning and Truth
• Discourses of Culture
• Writing for Academic Publication
• Literature and Conflict
• Auto/Biographical Narrative Communication, Memory and Communication

Staff profile

Jess Moriarty 

Jess Moriarty researches in the field of pedagogy in writing practice, especially in auto-ethnographical academic writing and in creative writing with undergraduates.

She graduated from the University of Sussex with a Creative Writing MA in 2002 and joined the University of Brighton soon after. Jess won a Teaching Excellence award for her workshops with undergraduates, in which she aims to ignite inspiration and motivation with the writing process.

Jess is the co-founder of Work Write Live, which provides a range of writing short courses and volunteering opportunities for students across arts and humanities courses to develop the vocational and academic skills they are acquiring on their degree programme. She has been interviewed by the Times Higher Educational Supplement about her workshops and won an Innovation Award for her retreats, where participants are encouraged to develop confidence with writing and speaking. Under the banner of Work Write Live, students are able to run open mic evenings, produce creative writing anthologies and organise an end-of-year graduate show.

Jess's doctorate looked at how to make academic writing more personal and creative and included a play based on her autobiographical and researched experiences with academic life. Her work looks at cross-disciplinary practice, community engagement and linking creative processes with the employability agenda.

Meet the rest of the course staff:

Craig Jordan

Student views

Louise Clement

"The part-time route in the Creative Writing MA has been inspiring and practical. The course has offered guidance, direction and a vital opportunity for critiquing both my writing and writing practice.

"In attending various workshops and events, I’ve begun to feel part of a community of writers. I have felt continually supported by the expert advice from the university and encouraged to develop as an independent professional creative practitioner. The result of this creative validation has been to propel my own practice in poetry filmmaking, setting up a writers’ collective and a collaboration that has led to an event in the Brighton Fringe.

"While my focus has always been poetry, through my learning on the modules I have begun new practices in graphics, audio and film, which have come to be essential to my own creative expression."

Location

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Falmer campus and Brighton and Sussex Medical School map