Creative Writing

MA

The MA in Creative Writing is a stimulating and rewarding programme that aims to enable its students to create significant portfolios of publishable work.

Campus Chester
Course MA
Length 1 Year Full-time
Start date September 2012

Taught by workshops, seminars and one-to-one tutorials, the emphasis is always practical. The four modules - Writing Prose Fiction, Life Writing, Research Methods, The Writing Project - are designed to develop the craft of excellent writing.

 

Why Study the MA in Creative Writing at Chester?

The programme aims to enable its students to write publishable fiction, life writing or poetry. It draws on the skills of a dynamic team of experienced tutors, scholars, writers, and editors. Recent and forthcoming publications include:

  • Novels: China; The School of Night; Sylvie’s Riddle.
  • Short story anthologies and collections: An Anatomy of Chester; Burning Bibles; Edge Words.
  • Poetry anthologies and collections: Bodies of Water; Elements; Dr Placebo; Gilgamesh; In Praise of Paving; Life Lines.
  • Poems and short stories in: Agenda; Asimov’s; Anon; Blue Dog; Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine; International Literary Quarterly; London Magazine; Orbis; Overland; Paraxis; Poetry Monthly; Red Ink; Shearsman; Shadowtrain.
  • Student textbooks: Studying English Literature; volumes in Continuum’s Character Studies series; Writing Fiction.
  • Essays: ‘Grub Street in Iain Sinclair’s Disappearances of London’; ‘The Liberal Tradition in [South African] Fiction’; ‘Notes Towards the Definition of the Short-Short Story’; ‘From Cowper to Conrad: Authenticity at the End of the Century’; ‘Editing Ford Madox Ford’s Poetry’; ‘Image-Music-Text: Ford Madox Ford and the Impressionist Lyric’.
  • Essay collections: Literature and Authenticity, 1780-1900; Translation Practices: Through Language to Culture; Ford Madox Ford: An Introduction.

Dr Ashley Chantler (Programme Leader) and Dr Peter Blair edit Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. Contributors include: Ama Ata Aidoo, Beryl Bainbridge, Elleke Boehmer, Mark Budman, David Eagleman, Dave Eggers, Francesca Haig, David Gaffney, Michael Cawood Green, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Liesl Jobson, James Kelman, J. Robert Lennon, Dan Rhodes, Matt Thorne, Alan Wall, and Gee Williams.

The Seaborne Library (Chester campus) houses the ‘Flash Fiction Special Collection', the world's largest archive of short-short story anthologies, collections, and journals.

Features

Guest speakers on the MA have included:

  • Elaine Feinstein, author of Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet, 2002) and The Russian Jerusalem (Carcanet, 2008);
  • Tony Frazer, editor of Shearsman and Shearsman Books;
  • David Gaffney, author of Sawn-Off Tales (Salt, 2006), Aromabingo (Salt, 2007) and Never Never (Tindal Street Press, 2008);
  • Rebecca Goss, author of The Anatomy of Structures (Flambard Press, 2010);
  • Ian Marchant, author of Parallel Lines (Bloomsbury, 2003) and The Longest Crawl (Bloomsbury, 2006).

The Department is involved with the Chester Literature Festival and the Cheshire Prize for Literature. Guest speakers and/or judges have included:

  • Carol Ann Duffy
  • Pat Barker
  • Andrew Motion
  • David Peace
  • Michael Morpurgo
  • Patrick Gale
  • U. A. Fanthorpe
  • Anne Stevenson
  • Patricia Duncker
  • Gee Williams
  • Tim Firth
  • Former Cheshire Poet Laureates, Harry Owen and John Lindley.

As well as having the chance to see inspiring speakers, our MA students also have opportunities to read their own work, at events on campus and locally. The Department's student-run open-mic nights are always popular, as are the Zest poetry evenings in the city centre. Last year, several students were selected to read their short stories at the Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool.

The MA has a link with the Annette Green Authors' Agency, which will consider exceptional Writing Projects for representation.

Students' views

“Studying for the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chester gave me the opportunity to be a part of a diverse and supportive community of writers. I thoroughly enjoyed weekly seminars as they gave me the chance to share my work in a friendly and stimulating environment and to receive invaluable constructive criticism from my peers and tutors. The importance placed on giving fair, honest and useful feedback sharpened my ability to critically examine other people’s work, as well as my own. The texts we studied provoked interesting and thought-provoking discussions but the focus was always brought back to how reading the texts could help us to improve our own writing. The academic team in the English Department is second to none – the encouragement and advice I received whilst completing the MA gave me the confidence to submit my work for publication, resulting in a number of my poems and short stories achieving publication in a variety of literary magazines.”

Karen Campbell (2010-11)

 

“In terms of writing, studying this MA has turned me into my own drill sergeant. It taught me the necessities of constantly working hard and pushing myself to achieve better. Alongside this I also learnt how I should go about getting my work published and I am starting to write short stories with an aim to see them featured in journals or anthologies. Writing should involve sitting down every day and getting words on the page, it should be reading widely to enrich your own work, and sharing your pieces with a constructive audience. This MA delivers in all these areas and is run by helpful, experienced and approachable staff who always had the time and advice I needed.”

Dominic Carter (2010-11)


“Studying for this MA was a good way to extinguish any romantic notions of what a writer is. Writers do not sit in attics waiting for inspiration, but instead must be committed, self-critical workers. The modules had surprising results: at the beginning of the programme, for example, I was anxious about writing prose fiction, but emerged as a confident writer of short-short and short stories. I found the Writing Project (for which I wrote a collection of poetry about Shropshire) to be an excellent opportunity to submerge myself in something I was passionate about, and to employ the skills gained from previous modules, always with approachable and supportive tutors on hand.”

Rosie Brown (2009-10)


“Since graduating, I’ve returned to the North East where I’ve had numerous part-time jobs, most recently as a bookseller. I became active in the literary scenes of Newcastle and Durham, reading at various poetry nights, and reviewing live events and performances for the Durham Book Festival. I’m currently assisting Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts in a pilot project to develop an interactive tour of the Great North Museum, combining QR code technologies with creative writing prompts based on the exhibitions.

I’ve also been commissioned to collaborate with four visual artists on a public arts project which will launch in Spring/Summer 2012. A new sequence of poems I’ve written for the project will feature as interdisciplinary artworks on display at the seafront in South Shields.

I was awarded the Andrew Waterhouse Award for my poetry by New Writing North in July 2011 as part of the annual Northern Writers’ Awards and am now taking part in a professional development course for poets led by the writer Clare Pollard.

My first pamphlet of poetry has been accepted for publication by Red Squirrel Press and will be out in spring 2012. Having had poems and short stories in various literary journals and magazines, I aim to put together a full collection in the near future.”

Jake Campbell (2009-10)


"My fiction-focused horizons were immediately expanded by being exposed to a consideration of varied writing forms. Seminars provided the opportunity to explore previously intimidating styles, and workshops were revelatory in developing a structure of invaluable, ongoing feedback. With encouragement, a seminar exercise developed into my Writing Project and on to become a book (I had never planned to write) which was recently signed by an agent." 

Kirstie Atherton (2008-09)


"The MA made me self-critical, avoid cliché, and pay greater attention to the revision of work. Seminars and student workshops encouraged honest feedback and challenged sloppy writing. The programme motivated me to complete my first novel, Soldier Bee, and I am now working on a second, a political satire, In the Party Interest."

Rob Blaney (2008-09)

Next: Modules

Programme Structure:

  • Writing Prose Fiction - this module explores matters of style and technique, with particular attention given to the mechanics of exemplary short stories and novels. Issues to be addressed include: plot; structure; characterisation; setting; the role of the narrator; point of view; and the representation of speech, thought, and action. Throughout the module, students will apply the technical knowledge they will learn to their own creative practice, experimenting with different forms, styles and subject matter.
    The module runs for ten weeks and is taught by a one-hour workshop and a three-hour seminar (on the same day). Typically, it begins in the first week of October.

  • Life Writing - students will study and try their hands at various types of autobiography, biography, and travel writing. Particular attention will be given to: formal constraints; ethics; the question of objectivity and the problematisation of ‘fact’, ‘fiction’ and ‘truth’; rendering the alien, the other, and the exotic; the reliability of sources; the advantages and dangers of ‘I’; the importance of detail; and irony, humour, and parody.
    The module runs for ten weeks and is taught by a one-hour workshop and a three-hour seminar (on the same day). Typically, it begins in the first week of the spring term.

  • Research Methods - this module prepares students for The Writing Project. It explores the kinds of research creative writers do, the range of sources available to them, and the use of those sources in their work. The module will help each student establish fields of enquiry and investigation useful to the production of an extended and potentially publishable piece of creative writing.
    The module runs for five weeks and is taught by a one-hour workshop and a three-hour seminar (on the same day). Typically, it begins in the first week of the summer term.

  • The Writing Project - this module gives students the opportunity to develop their own specialist interest to produce a substantial text aimed at any of the available publishing and media outlets. Projects might include: a collection of short stories; a novella; an extract from a novella/novel; a portfolio of poetry (a collection, sequence, or long poem); or a sustained piece, or portfolio, of life writing. Each student will be assigned a supervisor, who in one-to-one tutorials will give advice and support from the conception of the project to its completion.
    The module starts at the end of Research Methods. Typically, the deadline for submission is 30 September.
Next: Assessment

The assessment methods for each module sometimes change slightly each year. The following gives an indication of what might be required for successful completion of the programme.

Writing Prose Fiction:

  • 1 x 1,500-word essay on a topic studied on the module.
  • 1 x 1,500-word short story, plus a 500-word preface.
  • 1 x 3,500-word opening of a novella or novel, plus a 1000-word preface.

Life Writing:

  • 1 x 1,500-word essay on two or more texts studied on the module.
  • 1 x 1,500-word piece of life writing (prose or poetry), plus a 500-word preface.
  • 1 x 3,500-word piece of life writing (prose or poetry), plus a 1000-word preface.

Research Methods:

  • 1 x 4,000-word portfolio comprising:

1 x 2,000-word research diary, recording the student’s ongoing research enquiry and investigation;
1 x 1,000-word piece of creative writing showing evidence of the application of research, plus a 500-word critical commentary;
1 x 500-word proposal for a longer writing project.

The Writing Project:

  • 1 x 16,000-word project. The range of acceptable projects includes: a collection of short stories; a novella; an extract from a novella or novel; a portfolio of poetry (a collection, sequence, or long poem); a sustained piece, or portfolio, of life writing (prose or poetry).
Next: Careers

The transferable skills acquired in studying an MA in Creative Writing enable students to develop their careers by giving them the flexibility so much sought after by employers.

Some students will go on to become professional writers in a variety of contexts.

As well as seeking to publish their prose and poetry, MA postgraduates will have advanced writing skills invaluable in a whole range of present and future employments, including teaching, publishing, the media and communications, advertising, public relations, journalism, librarianship, management and administration, personnel work, and, of course, any kind of employment which depends on creative language skills.

Next: Entry requirements

Admission to the programme is subject to:

  • A written application.
  • A minimum of a second-class honours degree, or the equivalent, in an appropriate discipline: Creative Writing, Drama, English, English Language, Film Studies, History of Art, Journalism, Theatre Studies. However, credit exemption may be given for appropriate certificated or experiential learning undertaken or completed within the previous five years (in line with the University of Chester’s policy on APCL/APEL).
  • A personal statement that among other things discusses: what creative writing you have done in at least the last year; what English-language novels, plays or poetry collections you have read in the last year and which ones you particularly admired; why you have chosen Chester’s MA Creative Writing.
  • Appropriate references. It is the responsibility of the applicant to arrange for references to be sent to Postgraduate Admissions.
  • A 10-page sample of creative writing (fiction and/or poetry and/or life writing), which will be requested by the Programme Leader after an application has been submitted.
  • In some instances, an interview.

Ideally, applications should be submitted by 1 June. After this date, email Dr Ashley Chantler before submitting an application.

Before applying, please go to:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/postgraduate-applications/applying-for-a-place

For information about fees and possible funding opportunities, go to:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/fees-per-module

Postgraduate Admissions is happy to supply further information about studying at Chester.


International Applicants

Admission to the programme is subject to:

  • A written application.
  • A minimum of a second-class honours degree, or the equivalent, in an appropriate discipline: Creative Writing, Drama, English, English Language, Film Studies, History of Art, Journalism, Theatre Studies. However, credit exemption may be given for appropriate certificated or experiential learning undertaken or completed within the previous five years (in line with the University of Chester’s policy on APCL/APEL).
  • English language proficiency.
  • A personal statement that among other things discusses: what creative writing you have done in at least the last year; what English-language novels, plays or poetry collections you have read in the last year and which ones you particularly admired; why you have chosen Chester’s MA Creative Writing.
  • A 10-page sample of creative writing (fiction and/or poetry and/or life writing), which should be submitted with the application.
  • Appropriate references. It is the responsibility of the applicant to arrange for references to be sent to the International Office.
  • In some instances, a Skype interview.

Ideally, applications should be submitted by 1 June. After this date, email Dr Ashley Chantler before submitting an application.

Before applying, please go to:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/international

For information about fees, go to:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/international/fees

The International Office is happy to supply further information about studying at Chester.

Beginning: Overview

Who to contact