Creative Writing and English Literature with a Year Abroad

Creative writing and English literature share a foundational conviction that language matters and that how something is written shapes what it means. English literature brings you into close and critical engagement with the works of other writers, developing your capacity for close reading, interpretation, and the construction of reasoned arguments about texts. Creative writing invites you to develop as a writer yourself, working across fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and other forms under the guidance of practising writers and through the sustained discipline of workshopping your own work with peers.

Together, the two develop a sophisticated understanding of craft that is both analytical and productive.

The University of East Anglia has a particularly distinguished reputation in creative writing, with a programme that has produced many of the most significant British writers of the last half century. This four-year version of the degree includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study in another country and to experience literature and culture from a different vantage point. That experience of displacement and encounter often proves creatively generative as well as academically enriching.

Throughout your studies you will read widely across periods and genres in English literature while developing your own voice and range as a writer, submitting and discussing your creative work in workshop settings that mirror the professional environment many writers inhabit after graduation.

Graduates move into a wide range of careers in which writing, reading, and communication are central. Publishing, journalism, broadcasting, copywriting, and content creation are all natural destinations, as are teaching, arts administration, and work in the charitable and cultural sectors. Many graduates pursue careers as writers, whether literary fiction, poetry, scriptwriting, or non-fiction, often alongside other work.

Postgraduate study in creative writing, literary studies, or publishing is another route taken by those who wish to deepen their expertise before entering the professional world.