MA Creative Writing

Course overview

Our MA in Creative Writing is a one-year full-time course delivered via an innovative blend of residential workshops, writing retreats, and distance learning – allowing you to engage in experiential learning but also to work flexibly around the residential elements on your own writing projects.

Core to this programme are three week-long writing residentials, held at the Ambleside Campus of the University of Cumbria. These residentials will each last for one week (7 days) and you will have an opportunity to work within a range of genres - including poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction - with a particular, though not exclusive, focus on themes relating to writing place, and will also explore a range of critical debates such as the role of art in addressing contemporary environmental concerns. You are required to attend these residentials including the possibility of some evening events and organise accommodation and/or local travel, the cost of which is not included in the course fees. Outside the main residential blocks, you can work flexibly, using online teaching resources to support your development as a writer.

The landscape of the English Lake District has been a source of inspiration to generations of poets and writers. This blended learning MA offers a unique opportunity to work for focused periods of time within this geographical landscape at the University of Cumbria's Ambleside campus in the heart of the Lake District National Park, now a UNESCO world heritage site.

Course summary

On successful completion students will be able to:

• demonstrate confidence and technical ability in a variety of modes of imaginative writing.
• apply skills learnt in workshops to their own writing and to understand and reflect on their own development as writers.
• display editorial and advanced revision skills in relation to a range of texts and genres.
• produce work that reflects a high level of technical ability and engages creatively with spatial, cultural and literary contexts.
• use advanced skills in literary criticism to improve their own creative practice.
• demonstrate an ability to work independently and in collaboration, and to evidence high level time planning and management skills.
• produce original creative work to a high standard in terms of presentation, structure and style
• display in their work a sensitive and creative response to place and environmental contexts.