Creative Writing - MA
Currently viewing course to start in 2025/26 Entry.
Our MA in Creative Writing helps you to develop your potential as a novelist, poet, scriptwriter or non-fiction author. It is taught by distinguished writers, with the support of a superb range of guest seminars and masterclasses by visiting authors, editors and agents, through our Institute of Creative and Critical Writing.
- Level Postgraduate Taught
- Study mode Full Time
- Award MA
- Start date September 2025
- Fees View course fees
- Subject
- Location City Centre
This course is:
Open to International Students
Overview
Our MA in Creative Writing helps you to develop your potential as a novelist, poet, scriptwriter or non-fiction author. It is taught by distinguished writers, with the support of a superb range of guest seminars and masterclasses by visiting authors, editors and agents, through our Institute of Creative and Critical Writing.
What's covered in this course?
Our MA Creative Writing will help you to fulfil your potential as a writer, whether you work in fiction, poetry, screenplay or creative non-fiction. It is taught by distinguished authors, with the support of a superb range of guest seminars by visiting speakers organised through our Institute of Creative and Critical Writing.
Writers are perpetual students. Our programme is designed to help you learn how to keep learning, enriching and refining your practice as an independent author, through disciplines that strengthen your creative imagination, develop your literary knowledge, and cultivate your critical sensitivity.
You will hone the skills you need and refine your practice in an atmosphere of creative experiment. Our course is founded upon the philosophy that writers can benefit from the same kind of professional training enjoyed by actors, dancers, musicians, and visual artists, and connects our writers to the creative sector in which they work.
You’ll have the opportunity to develop your writing across forms and extend your range in fields that may be new to you, under specialist guidance in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and creative non-fiction. You’ll be part of a Faculty with a long history of working with the creative industries, and a College with strong connections to literary culture beyond the university, including Writing West Midlands, the Birmingham Literature Festival, the National Writers’ Conference, Verve Poetry Festival, The Emma Press, and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, which was founded by alumni of the MA Creative Writing programme. Like our partners, we see the literary arts and their study and enjoyment as fundamental to civic and cultural life.
Writers help shape the culture into which new literary works are received, as readers and thinkers, and our MA Creative Writing emphasises the close relationship between creativity and critical awareness. You will be introduced to ways of conceptualising creative writing as a form of knowledge and research, and each of our modules will help you to explore and apply critical methods both to your own work and the contexts in which it will be read.
Our course will help you become more confident in developing and presenting your writing across the key areas in which contemporary authors work: in print publication, on digital platforms, and in-person public events.
You will belong to a community of writers that includes your tutors, who will share with you their insight, experience, and practical advice. The range and flexibility of our programme, together with our emphasis on small-group teaching, enables you both to deepen and broaden your practice and to focus on your distinctive needs as a writer.
Students from the MA Creative Writing form the editorial committee for the annual anthology of new creative writing from the College of English and Media, and benefit from the support and guidance of an Editorial Consultant with many years of experience in the industry.
Each spring, we offer an exclusive writing retreat to our MA Creative Writing students – a rare and exciting opportunity to develop your work in a conducive environment at a key stage in the programme.
We welcome students of any age and background who are committed to developing their practice as a writer
We are very fortunate students to have a Faculty who are pulling out all the stops to help writers of the future fulfil their writing ambitions. I appreciate the lengths that you and rest of the School of English go to, to make BCU's MA in Creative Writing course such an exciting experience. Thank you.
Ms Shirley Lloyd, MA Creative Writing student and Student Academic Leader
Why Choose Us?
- You’ll learn from distinguished writers who are experts in their field.
- Our exciting programme of guest seminars, masterclasses and public events, held by the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing.
- We have a close relationship with Writing West Midlands, the literature development agency for our region, which also runs the Birmingham Literature Festival.
- We help you prepare for a career in writing. Our graduates have an excellent record of success with their work.
- You’ll be part of an outstanding centre of creativity in the Faculty of the Arts, Design and Media.
- Our teaching staff are also expert researchers in English Language and Literature. 94% of research in English at BCU was judged to be either world-leading (4*) or internationally excellent (3*) in REF2021.
OPEN DAY
Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to learn about this course in detail, chat to students, explore our campus and tour accommodation.
Next Event: 24 November 2024
Entry Requirements
Essential requirements
Essential Requirements
You submit a portfolio of writing, published or unpublished, of recent creative work. |
This must be no more than ten pages long typed at 11pt. in any literary genre, of prose (2000 words fiction or non-fiction), and/or six - 10 poems, and/or 10 pages of playscript or screenplay. |
We also require two satisfactory references. |
You may be interviewed by members of the MA Creative Writing team. |
Applications will be considered throughout the year for entry in September of any academic year. |
Selection for the course is based on your application portfolio and, where relevant, your interview. |
IELTS 7.0 with a minimum of 7.0 in writing and 6.5 in all other bands. |
If you have a qualification that is not listed, please contact us.
Fees & How to Apply
UK students
Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.
Award: MA
Starting: Sep 2025
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Full Time
- 1 year
- £9,190 in 2025/26
- Full Time
- 18 months (including Professional Placement - see below*)
- £10,110 in 2025/26
International students
Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.
Award: MA
Starting: Sep 2025
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Full Time
- 1 year
- £18,600 in 2025/26
- Full Time
- 18 months (including Professional Placement - see below*)
- £20,460 in 2025/26
*Professional Placement option
The Professional Placement version of the course is optional and is offered as an alternative to the standard version of the course.
This will allow you to complete a credit bearing, 20 week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Master’s Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market. Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.
You will be responsible for finding and securing your own placement. The University, however, will draw on its extensive network of local, regional and national employers to support you in finding a suitable placement to complement your chosen area of study. You will also benefit from support sessions delivered by Careers+ as well as advice and guidance from your School.
Placements will only be confirmed following a competitive, employer-led selection process, therefore the University will not be able to guarantee placements for students who have registered for the ‘with Professional Placement’ course. All students who do not find a suitable placement or do not pass the competitive selection process will be automatically transferred back to the standard, non-placement version of the course.
You must submit a portfolio of your creative writing. This should be between 1,500-2,000 words of prose fiction or creative non-fiction, 10 pages of properly formatted screenplay, or six to eight poems. If you wish to submit your work in more than one form, you can upload a combination of any two.
Please submit your portfolio as either a Word document or PDF file.
Personal statement
You’ll need to submit a personal statement as part of your application for this course. This will need to highlight your passion for postgraduate study – and your chosen course – as well as your personal skills and experience, academic success, and any other factors that will support your application for further study.
If you are applying for a stand alone module, please include the title of the module you want to study in your Personal Statement.
Not sure what to include? We’re here to help – take a look at our top tips for writing personal statements and download our free postgraduate personal statement guide for further advice and examples from real students.
Course in Depth
Module
In order to complete this course a student must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 180 credits)
This module explores the creative connections between how we read and how we write. You will examine the ways in which writing becomes ‘creative’, and the different forms of reading that different kinds of writing require of us. Providing a fresh grounding in the practices and disciplines fundamental to the modern author, this module will also introduce you to research methods, concepts, scholarly standards and critical exegesis relevant to creative practice both within and beyond postgraduate higher education.
The module emphasises active, practical learning in its seminars and directed study time, with a focus on generating stimulating new material for you to work with. You will creatively experiment with the literary and artistic traditions available to you, engaging closely and imaginatively with the structure, technique, method, diction, and subject matter of other texts and artworks – and their formal, thematic, or historical relationship to works by other writers, artists and thinkers – developing your awareness of creative intertextuality and how your own writing participates in a living literary culture. With this in mind, you will also study the ways in which literary works are received and circulated today, and in particular the role of literary reviewing.
This module addresses core aspects of the discipline of creative writing, providing you with the key skills to develop your work in the literary forms of your choosing. The emphasis here is on generating material and refining your practice through close, guided attention to exemplary texts drawn from a wide range of literature. Discussion in class is accompanied by practical exercises in prose fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, script, and the differences and affinities between distinct kinds of writing. You will be encouraged to consider creative techniques and structures from comparative literary traditions, and the value of productive cultural interchange, in relation to your own practice.
In addition to focusing on fundamentals of story, narrative method, character, point of view, and dialogue, this module encourages you to experiment across the principal literary forms, and develop an active, adaptable, and participatory approach to contemporary literary culture. The module takes as its axiom the principle that, in creative writing, form is content, and focuses throughout on enhancing precision and accuracy in the use of language, and the importance of detailed editing and sensitive revision.
This module addresses the place of literary writing in contemporary society. It brings together both literary critics and practitioners, and encourages you to explore the creative relationship between the different forms of writing they employ. You will study a variety of research methods, both in literary scholarship and in creative writing, and examine the evolving ways in which the contemporary writer and thinker can pursue their work both in and beyond publication, including pitching and bid writing, working across different media, collaboration, and shaping your role in the public sphere. The ideas and methods canvassed in this module will support you in developing your Major Project and enhancing your professional development.
This module examines three forms of creative writing in rotation – fiction, poetry, and screenwriting – and enables you to select either one or two as specialist strands. Each strand offers a focused exploration of techniques and practices fundamental to the chosen form, supported by workshops, seminar discussion and independent study.
For the fiction strand, you will hone the essential elements of storytelling, including character development, establishing evocative and specific settings, balancing drama and exposition, managing story and plot, point of view, narrative voice, and stylistic and structural control. Through practical exercises and collaborative critical discussion, you will be encouraged to experiment with different ways of developing and shaping your writing, while working to produce either on a novel or a collection of short stories, edited and produced to professional standards. Classes will also explore practical elements of the writing life, including time management and routes to publication.
In the poetry strand, you will develop your range and technique as a contemporary poet, reader and thinker on poetry. You will enhance your knowledge and insight through seminars in which you will test and apply your understanding of poetry through a range of practical activities. These will include close readings of poems and discussion of work on the nature and practice of poetry. You will apply what you have learnt in composing new poetry, and in describing and justifying your own ideas concerning poetry – including the relationship between your work and the intellectual and poetic traditions in which it participates. You will also gain practical knowledge of publishing and performing your own work.
The screenwriting strand will teach you the structural principles involved in writing screenplays and provide you with the conceptual tools to critically examine your creative practice. You will explore various structural paradigms, analyse film and TV extracts, and learn methods for presenting and pitching projects. Practical activities, including script-to-screen comparisons and viewing feature film and TV drama extracts, will enhance your understanding of the screenwriting process and industry practice.
Throughout the module, you will have the opportunity to engage with your chosen form(s) of creative writing in a supportive and collaborative environment, guided by experienced practitioners and tutors. In this innovative context, you are encouraged to experiment with material across different genres in a process of creative cross-fertilisation.
The purpose of this module is to enable you to produce a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed project in creative writing.
This module is an opportunity to create work to the professional standard required of the discipline; to plan and initiate a larger project as an independent writer; to innovate, experiment, and develop further, as a writer; and to reflect critically on your work, situating your practice within the context relevant to your chosen medium.
At this stage, you are expected to work independently but you will receive one-to-one support from your supervisor, who will be familiar with your chosen form.
Download course specification
Download nowYou’ll be given intensive exposure to the creative practice of established writers through our seminars and masterclasses, and enjoy one-to-one tuition as you work towards a larger writing project towards the end of your course.
You can choose to study either full-time over one year or part-time over two years. Throughout the course, your learning will be supported through our online learning platform.
Assessment is by portfolio, which will include a reflective commentary on your own creative practice, in addition to the writing itself.
You’ll be encouraged throughout the course to make connections with the work of other departments within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, to which the School of English belongs. The Faculty is the centre of an extraordinary range and concentration of creative activity, which helps to make studying at Birmingham City University an exciting and distinctive experience.
Every year, both full-time and part-time students are invited to take part in compiling, editing and producing our annual anthology of new creative writing from the School of English, which is launched at the Creative Writing Summer Show in June. As part of the professional experience we offer on the course, a student committee edits and produces the anthology, with mentoring from a leading industry editor, funded by the School.
We also encourage you to volunteer at the annual Birmingham Literature Festival and other Writing West Midlands events, so you can garner first-hand experience of the writing industry and gain useful contacts.
Employability
We believe that with its focus on language, pleasure, and the creative imagination, the study of creative writing is immensely rewarding in itself. Moreover, the ability to think and communicate clearly, imaginatively and effectively are among the most valuable skills you can have.
Postgraduates earn an average £9,000 more per year than those with just undergraduate degrees.* A postgraduate qualification can really help you stand out from the crowd in today’s competitive job market. By becoming a specialist in your field, you’ll have the chance to advance thinking in that subject and lead, rather than follow, the latest developments.
*The Sutton Trust, 2015.
Student success
Our graduates have gone on to achieve widespread acclaim for their creative writing, including the following successes:
- Shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award
- Poetry collections and pamphlets published by leading independent presses
- Founding and editing Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal
- Published in leading poetry and fiction journals
- Short fiction commissioned and broadcast on BBC Radio 4
- Shortlisted for the Mslexia Short Story Award 2022
- Published in Mslexia Best Women's Short Fiction anthology
- Written feature films that have gone on to commercial release
- Shortlisted (on multiple occasions) for the Manchester Fiction Prize
- Won the Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry
- Won the international section of the Hanna Greally Awards at the SiarScéal Festival
- Highly commended in the Bridport Short Story Prize, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Roscommon Prize, the Bare Fiction Short Story Competition, the Frome Festival Short Story Competition, the Fish Publishing Prize, the Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Impress Prize for New Writers
- Won and been shortlisted for the Orwell Society Dystopian Short Story Competition
- Won places on the BFilm Micro Digital Film Studio and Talent Development Hub
- Won places on the Writing West Midlands Room 204 Writer Development Programme
International
Birmingham City University is a vibrant and multicultural university in the heart of a modern and diverse city. We welcome many international students every year – there are currently students from more than 80 countries among our student community.
The University is conveniently placed, with Birmingham International Airport nearby and first-rate transport connections to London and the rest of the UK.
Our international pages contain a wealth of information for international students who are considering applying to study here, including:
- Details of the entry requirements for our courses
- Some of the good reasons why you should study here
- How to improve your language skills before starting your studies
- Information relevant to applicants from your country
- Where to find financial support for your studies.
Facilities & Staff
Our Facilities
When you join Birmingham City University, the first thing you will notice is the high standard of our campuses. With an investment of over £400 million across our buildings and facilities, we are committed to giving you the very best learning environment to help shape your experience.
Our English courses are based at both Millennium Point, and at our £63 million development the Curzon Building, located on our City Centre campus in the vibrant second city that is Birmingham.
Discover your bright and open learning spaces, your 24 hour (during term time) library, drama, media and radio studios, along with state of the art lecture theatres, and a variety of sociable break-out areas, all adding to your unique learning experience.
Our staff
Professor Gregory Leadbetter
Professor of Poetry, Course Director of the MA in Creative Writing, Director of the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing
Gregory Leadbetter is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University. His research focuses on Romantic poetry and thought, the traditions to which these relate, and the history and practice of poetry more generally. His book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) won the University English Book Prize 2012. His poetry...
More about GregoryAndy Conway
Course Director for BA (Hons) Film and Screenwriting
Andy Conway is a novelist and screenwriter based in Birmingham, who graduated from this institution in 1994 with a 1st in English Language and Literature. He teaches undergraduate courses in Screenwriting, Drama and Adaptation in the School, and also teaches Screenwriting at The National Academy of Writing, Worcester University and Newman College....
More about AndyHelen Cross
Author
Helen’s novels include My Summer of Love, which became a BAFTA award-winning film, and Spilt Milk, Black Coffee, which she has recently adapted for the screen. She has written two graphic anthologies with artist Carol Adlam, most recently Women at War (2016). Her stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies and her audio plays, which...
More about HelenProfessor David Roberts
Professor of English
David has taught in a variety of universities and maintained a strong interest in seventeenth-century drama and theatre. His most recent books have been about the lives of actors and writers. In 2010 his CUP biography of Thomas Betterton was shortlisted for the Theatre Library Association of America Prize. David...
More about David