Creative Writing MA (Distance Learning)

Curtis Brown Agent's Choice competition

All successful applicants who take up their place with us in September will be entered into our competition to have a consultation with Annabel White, an agent at top London literary agency Curtis Brown.

So make sure the creative work you submit with your application is your very best – it might win you a meeting with a literary agent.

What you will study

The Creative Writing MA (Distance Learning) follows the same course structure as the successful and popular Creative Writing MA. You'll be taught through individual tutorials, streamed lectures and readings held at or sponsored by the University.

The Writers' Workshop module will encourage you to develop your writing 'voice' through engagement with fellow students across a range of genres (in fiction or creative non-fiction), while the Special Study module enables you to specialise in one genre, such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama.

You will learn the elements of fiction, poetry and drama as well as studying relevant critical theory and trying out your own fictional experiments in the Critical Challenges module. You'll take part in online masterclasses and put all you have learned into practice in the dissertation module. It is possible to use both workshop modules and the dissertation together to work towards a substantial part of a longer piece such as a novel.

This Creative Writing MA will give you the knowledge and confidence to enter the cultural debate and to begin to identify outlets for your own writing.

Timetables

Full-time students can attend two campus days, scheduled annually, usually in November and February.

Part-time students normally attend the November campus day in the first year and the February campus day in the second year.

Fees for this course

After you graduate

Some of our departmental graduates have achieved notable successes, having published short stories and novels which were started as part of their degree, and attracted good literary agents, for example:

• Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel, My Sister the Serial Killer, reviewed by The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4's Open Book and Front Row, has won the Crime and Thriller book of the year at the British Book Awards; Oyinkan is the first black woman to do so.  
• Grainne Murphy has recently signed a two-book deal with Legend Press. Her debut novel, Where the Edge Is, was published in September 2020, with The Ghostlights to be published in 2021. 
• Ben Halls' debut The Quarry was book of the day in The Guardian in March 2020. 
• Amy Clarke has signed a two-book deal. Like Clockwork is a psychological suspense novel about a true-crime podcast host who's obsessively trying to solve the decades-old cold case of a notorious Minnesotan serial killer whose victims were each one year younger than the last. It is due to be published in March/April 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, with a second book to follow. 
• A story Seraphina Madsen wrote for the MA Critical Challenges module was published in the UK's pre-eminent literary journal, The White Review, and secured her an agent and a book deal. 
• Stevan Alcock is another MA student whose debut novel – workshopped on our MA – was published by 4th Estate.  
• Hannah Vincent is a former MFA student with novels out with Myriad Editions and Salt. 
• Myriad Editions also run a writing competition each year aimed at finding new writers, with MFA student Karly Stilling winning in 2015. This year the award was won by another current Kingston student, Sylvia Carr. Former MA (now PhD student) Joseph Pierson was a recent runner-up. 
• Julia Lewis is a former MFA student and experimental poet who has gone on to publish a wide range of work. She also rewrote MA tutor James Miller's novel Lost Boys as a collection of experimental poetry. 
• Stefan Mohamed won the Dylan Thomas Prize and has gone to have a successful career as a writer of YA fiction. 
• MA student Vicky Newham signed a two book deal for her crime series. Vicky is on the Daggers longlist for the best crime novel by a first-time author. 
• Faiqa Mansab published her debut novel This House of Clay and Water in Pakistan and India to great acclaim and it  has been optioned by the talented Sheherzade Sheikh for screen adaptation. 
• Other successes include Susie Lynes and Lauren Forry. 
• Other former students have gone on to work in editorial posts in the publishing industry.

Research areas

Research in English literature and creative writing at Kingston University covers the following areas:

• 19th and 20th century British and American fiction;
• fictions of globalisation;
• modernism;
• gothic writing;
• travel writing;
• women's writing from the 18th century to the present;
• New Woman and fin de siècle fictions;
• Shakespeare;
• literature of the English Reformation period;
• postcolonial studies;
• theories of gender;
• life writing and trauma;

It focuses around the following research initiatives:

• Iris Murdoch Studies - research on the Iris Murdoch archives acquired by Kingston University in 2003/04).
• Life Narratives Research Group - bringing together best practice from all genres of life narrative work.
• Cultural Histories at Kingston - centred around the concept of the 'cultural text', the group includes scholars from the fields of literature, film, media, history, music, dance, performance, and journalism.
• Writers' Centre Kingston - a literary cultural centre dedicated to creative writing in all its forms, with an annual programme of events, talks, workshops and festivals.
• Race/Gender Matters - captures and concentrates research on theoretical, critical and creative engagements with the materiality of race, gender and language.

We also hold regular seminars and host presentations by visiting speakers.