Creative Writing and English

Birkbeck’s BA Creative Writing and English is an acclaimed course ideal if you are an emerging writer keen to develop your creative writing practice and expand your knowledge of literature.

Why choose this course?

• This course offers you the chance to complement your creativity with critical reflection, learning about writers who think about culture and history and using your creativity to challenge or provoke readers to ask important questions.

• You will develop your writing practice and your ability to critically respond to texts, reading and interpreting the works of other writers in order to become a better writer.

• This BA Creative Writing and English is delivered by esteemed faculty and published writers with valuable industry connections and experience including critics, such as Marina Warner and Roger Luckhurst, and creative writers including novelist Luke Williams, playwright and screenwriters David Eldridge and Daragh Carville, poet, novelist and non-fiction writer Julia Bell, novelist Wes Brown, and non-fiction writer Richard Hamblyn.

What you will learn

In workshops you will develop your skills in writing drama, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and in screenwriting, and deepen your understanding of these forms. In seminars and lectures, you will learn about storytelling, literary form, writing practices and literary cultures, and creative writing’s relationship to different cultural contexts. In Creative Writing, you will choose from a selection of modules offering practice and theory in drama, poetry, narrative fiction, script for film and TV, or experimental writing, eventually specialising in one of these genres for a final-year dissertation project. In English, you will take compulsory and option modules to help you think critically about texts, writing essays on a range of topics from feminism and sexuality to climate change and migration.

How you will learn

You will attend creative writing workshops where you will share your writing and read the writing of your peers, discuss your writing-in-progress and gain regular feedback. You will complement this learning with lectures and seminars from internationally renowned researchers and specialists.

This course is available to study full- or part-time. It has an evening timetable with classes taking place in the evening.

Foundation Year

If you opt for the Foundation Year route, this will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. It is ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, or if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you didn't achieve the grades you need for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

Highlights

• Birkbeck was ranked 2nd in the UK for its English Language and Literature research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

• Birkbeck is located in the heart of literary London, in Bloomsbury, WC1. You could be studying in a building that was once home to Virginia Woolf and frequented by members of the Bloomsbury Group.

• You will be eligible to submit work to the annual Birkbeck creative writing journal, The Mechanics’ Institute Review.

Careers and employability
On successfully graduating from this BA Creative Writing and English, you will have gained an array of important transferable skills, including:

• the capacity to think and communicate creatively and critically

• sophisticated use of written and spoken English

• an ability to understand and apply complex ideas

• effective organisation and time-keeping skills

• facility and precision in the use of analytical tools

• strong skills and initiative in collecting and organising complex materials and writing up clear reports.

Graduates can pursue careers including:

• creative writing

• publishing

• journalism

• publishing

• media

• academia

• research.

Course modules

For information about course structure and the modules you will be studying, please visit Birkbeck’s online prospectus.