Creative Writing MFA

Our Creative Writing Research degrees are unique and intense programmes for practising writers who wish to complete an ambitious creative project.

Overview

Our new research Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Doctor of Fine Arts (DFA) build on a long history of offering Masters and Doctoral options in the study and practice of Creative Writing.

Our research degrees incorporate hybrid taught elements (literary and practical seminars; workshops; and practical pedagogy) within a supervised research context that best support your creative and critical work.

Both programmes give you dedicated, supported time to complete a substantial creative work, include opportunities to teach writing to undergraduates and apply to be a graduate teaching assistant for other literature courses, and the DFA additionally allows you to undertake an extended academic research, informed by your work and practice, leading to a significant critical essay or output.

Our students enjoy the guidance of writers including Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Colin Herd, Laura Marney, Elizabeth Reeder, Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh, and critics such as John Coyle, Jane Goldman, Rob Maslen, Alan Riach, and Helen Stoddart.

Across all our postgraduate provision, both taught and by research, students have access to the best of the new and also develop a sense of the origins and histories.

Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow is based in the Edwin Morgan Writing Room with its book, periodical and audio-visual library. There is an ambitious programme of visiting speakers, masterclasses and public events. The University Library with its modern collections and archives is a crucial resource, including the archive for Edwin Morgan’s Papers. We also collaborate with the Mitchell Library, one of the great civic libraries of Europe. And our popular Creative Conversations bring a carefully curated range of visiting speakers to campus every week during the semester.

We have strong links with literary agents and an impressive history of published graduates.

Thesis length 40,000-60,000. Both the MFA and DFA run as Low Residency options, where students must attend at least two intense weeks of seminars, visiting speakers, workshop and practical elements (including teaching creative writing in the second year). One week will take place during the first week of the autumn semester in first year; the other will take place in the spring or early in the summer semester of second year.