Creative Writing

Creative writing is the practice and study of literary composition across fiction, poetry, life writing, script, and other forms. It is a discipline that develops your ability to use language purposefully and imaginatively, to understand how narrative works, and to create writing that is original, coherent, and capable of affecting a reader. Studying it formally asks you to move between the roles of writer and critic: producing your own work, reading widely and analytically, giving and receiving feedback, and developing the self-awareness to improve your practice over time.

University of Chester's four-year full-time Creative Writing (including a Foundation Year) programme begins with a foundation year designed to develop the academic and creative skills you will need before you move into the degree proper. This makes the programme accessible to students who may not have studied creative writing, literature, or related subjects in a formal academic setting, and it provides a supported transition into degree-level work. From there, the programme develops your writing across a range of forms and genres, exposing you to a wide body of literary work and encouraging you to situate your own practice within a broader literary context.

You will workshop your writing with peers and tutors in small groups, a central feature of creative writing education that develops your ability to articulate what a piece of writing is trying to do, what is working, and what needs revision. The programme includes a year abroad, which gives you the opportunity to study in a different literary culture and academic environment, an experience that can be genuinely generative for creative practice as well as intellectually broadening.

You will develop skills in reading closely, writing across multiple forms, revising systematically, and communicating about creative work with precision and care.

Graduates pursue careers in writing, publishing, journalism, teaching, script development, content creation, communications, and arts administration. Many also go on to postgraduate study in creative writing, with the MA now an established route into professional literary life.