Creative Writing and Publishing MA
Subject and course type
- Language and Media
- Postgraduate
Whether you want to become a published writer, work in publishing, or both, hone your craft with the Creative Writing and Publishing MA from Kingston. We’ve been ranked No.3 in London for journalism and publishing (Guardian University Guide, 2023).
Our award-winning former creative writing students include Booker-shortlisted Oyinkan Braithwaite, Joe Pierson, who won the Bridport Prize, Stefan Mohammed, awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize, Bafta-winner, Sarah Woolner, the acclaimed poet Dom Bury and celebrated novelist Faiqa Mansab.
You are reading:
Explore the art of publishing through the lens of creative writing
Our Publishing and Creative Writing teaching teams have relationships with all the leading fiction publishers and literary agents in the UK.
This course examines not only the craft of writing, but also how the publishing industry works. Throughout the course, you will develop a creative writing portfolio alongside studying trends in the industry.
Our Penrhyn Road campus is a hive of activity, housing our fantastic new Town House, with four floors of study space and our extensive library, the main student restaurant, and a host of teaching rooms and lecture theatres. At the heart of the campus is the John Galsworthy building, a six-storey complex that brings together lecture theatres, flexible teaching space and information technology suites around a landscaped courtyard.
Why choose this course
The creative writing element of this course is workshop-led and provides the opportunity to specialise in the genre of your choice. The publishing element focuses on marketing-led commercial and trade publishing, industry structure and core skills.
When the time comes to complete your final assessment, you may choose to pursue a creative writing dissertation, a publishing dissertation or undertake a practical publishing project.
Throughout this course, you will become part of Kingston's thriving community, with events such as:
- a series of masterclasses with publishing specialists and professionals
- weekly guest lectures from leading journalists. These include
- Samira Ahmed – an award-winning journalist with 20 years' experience in print and broadcast
- David Jenkins – editor of Little White Lies
- Richard Moynihan – Head of Digital Journalism, The Telegraph
- Alex Stedman – Fashion Blogger at The Frugality and former Style Editor at Red magazine
- regular readings through Writers' Centre Kingston, which offers an annual programme of events from talks to workshops and festivals. These are hosted and curated in partnership with local institutions, such as The Rose Theatre, the Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, the Museum of Futures and Kingston First
- regular philosophy lunchtime lectures, which focus on a major figure in the history of Western philosophy. These introduce students to that thinker's work, usually through the discussion of one of her or his emblematic works
You will also have the opportunity to contribute to Kingston University's publication, Ripple, which includes fiction, poetry, reviews and creative non-fiction and is edited by students on the course. Or you can be part of our literary magazine Persist, edited by MA students. This provides:
- a platform for the publication of creative work
- a chance to get hands-on experience of the publishing process
Kingston is ranked No.3 in London for journalism and publishing (Guardian University Guide 2023).
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where we encourage collaborative working and critical practice.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Course content
The creative writing element of this course is workshop-led. In the second semester, you will be given the opportunity to specialise in the genre of your choice, be it poetry, drama or children's fiction.
The publishing element focuses on marketing-led commercial and trade publishing. The modules you study will help you to understand the structure of the industry and the core skills required to enter.
You'll take two 30-credit modules from Publishing (one must be 'Create' but you can choose the other, and two 30-credit modules from Creative Writing. You can then choose whether to pursue a dissertation or practical project within either Publishing or Creative Writing, worth 60 credits.
Modules
In addition to taking two core modules, you can choose to write an academic dissertation to demonstrate your analytical skills and competence, or undertake a major practical publishing project as your final assessment. If you choose to take your dissertation in creative writing, you will write an extensive piece of creative writing accompanied by critical essay; you will be supervised by a professional writer.
Please note
Optional modules only run if there is enough demand. If we have an insufficient number of students interested in an optional module, that module will not be offered for this course.
Core module
30.00 credits
This module initiates you into the collaborative, creative business of commercial publishing and facilitates the development of your research, critical thinking and entrepreneurial skills. From books and magazines to apps and websites, you will explore the structure and operation of successful publishing companies, the stakeholders, tools and processes crucial to the development of profitable multi-platform products and services and the fundamental and disruptive business models used by both traditional companies and new industry-entrants.
After an immersive introduction to the complex and challenging nature of 21st century publishing, the module offers the opportunity for the generation and critical evaluation of your own publishing ideas. This involves using industry-standard sources and approaches to research and analyse markets, identify appropriate business models and operational strategies and build and present persuasive business cases.
Throughout, there is an emphasis on building robust and well-evidenced arguments to win support for theoretical assertions and practical publishing concepts. You also have the opportunity to work with your peers, and to critically evaluate each other's publishing proposals.
Optional modules
30.00 credits
This module considers the various individuals and communities (colleagues, shareholders, retailers, distributors, customers and other stakeholders) involved in the business of content delivery, and how most effectively to disseminate information and influence their behaviour, in order to promote effective marketing and sales.
This module will enable students to understand the principles of marketing and sales, and develop associated skills in applying them to meet the demands of modern publishing. Students will undertake exercises and discussions about the various applications of sales and marketing within the publishing industry and consider their relevance through all stages of the publishing process.
Through this process students will learn how best to investigate the market for demand, how to predict that demand, and how to prepare, market and distribute information about a product or service, whether in whole or part, to promote profitable fulfilment of that demand.
Publishers operate in an international context and so must market and sell their products to customers around the globe. Students will therefore consider how publishers organise themselves to deliver international operations successfully, and explore associated cultural, pricing and communication issues.
30.00 credits
This hands-on module gives students the key theory and the core practical skills needed to effectively manage content from raw material to finished print and digital presentation. Working in teams, students will carry out essential editorial and production tasks to produce a live published product. This group publication project enables students to collaborate to demonstrate the teamwork skills required for timely delivery, and to develop a thorough understanding of workflow and the associated processes. It also enables students to show how material gets turned into a market-appropriate product, ready for stakeholder approval and launch. The module enables students to illustrate how value gets added within the publishing supply chain, and to appreciate the content management systems and metadata vital in today's publishing environment.
By working on in-class exercises and assignment projects students will acquire and apply the key skills necessary to operate within a professional publishing context. Students will engage with project management, budgeting and costing, briefing, the different types of editing, design and layout, proofreading, and delivery. This module enhances employability by allowing students to use industry standard tools and packages, such as HTML, InDesign and Photoshop, and to improve understanding of basic typographic and design principles, the application of typesetting/mark-up skills, and production of publication ready files. Practising these hands-on skills will enhance students' understanding of how attention to detail can improve a product, make it the best it can be, and ensure it is presented profitably to its intended market.
30.00 credits
In this module you will present and discuss your own and each other's work in a weekly workshop. The draft work presented may include several genres and forms, such as crime writing, fantasy fiction, children's literature, historical fiction, science fiction, romance and autobiography. Practical criticism of student writing will be accompanied by discussion of the scope or constraints of the various genres, as well as the implications of particular forms. Attention will be paid to the transferable components of good writing: appropriate use of language, narrative pace, dialogue, expression, characterisation and mood.
30.00 credits
The module is designed to introduce students to some issues of critical and literary theory. The module is also designed to make students more aware of how their work impacts upon wider literary, cultural, political and philosophical issues. Awareness of these theories and of some of the issues surrounding the production and reception of literary texts will stimulate them, encouraging creative and conceptual thinking. The module will explore debates about literature and the practice of creative writing through readings of essays and texts that are relevant to criticism and theory. The academic component of the assessment will support the creative work with the objective that students will also have to demonstrate critical, academic, analytical skills.
30.00 credits
This module provides the opportunity to examine ways in which reading is essential to writing practice and teaches you to apply literary techniques and strategies from contemporary fiction, life writing and poetry texts to your own work. You will develop the concept of 'reading as a writer' in order to explore how contemporary concerns are brought to the fore by artistic strategies, and examine how an understanding of these can provide models for your own creative practice. You will submit work including a reflective reading journal as well as a creative piece in a genre of your choice.
30.00 credits
This module offers a regular and intensive review of your writing in one of the following genres: poetry, crime writing, prose fiction, biography, drama, scriptwriting or writing for children. You will be advised on how to strengthen your knowledge of the codes and conventions of your chosen genre to produce a substantial piece or collection of work that will reflect your knowledge of and engagement with your chosen genre. You will apply detailed feedback on your work to your writing as well as using your increased knowledge of your chosen genre to make your writing more effective. These elements will help you improve the key transferable skills of analysis and implementation that will feed forward into your dissertation module and into all analytical/practical tasks you subsequently undertake.
60.00 credits
The Publishing dissertation module provides students with the opportunity to independently conceive, explore, investigate and then deliver a significant study within the publishing industry and allied fields. The theoretical underpinning may vary according to the approach taken and the research questions chosen, but the outcome should be a sustained and coherent piece of detailed work, capable of publication and wider dissemination.
Depending on the issue chosen, students will engage with a range of professionals within the industry, and within related fields. Although students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, they are supported and mentored by an individual supervisor during the process.
60.00 credits
The Practical publishing project provides students with the opportunity to conceive, plan, manage and deliver a substantial publishing-related output in order to achieve specified goals. Examples of potential projects include producing and publishing a book, app or magazine, researching and presenting a start-up business plan or developing and implementing a major market research exercise. In all instances, students are expected to define a specific audience and relevant stakeholders, as well as personal development and project objectives. Students will also develop a structured project plan and a post-project critical evaluation, in order to identify personal goals for future professional development.
Depending on the nature of the chosen project, students will engage with different ranges of knowledge and skills, from practical print or digital production methods and processes to software expertise, market research (including questionnaire design, data analysis and interpretation) and business planning. Although students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, they are supported and mentored by an individual supervisor at key points in the process.
60.00 credits
This module focuses on your own creative writing and research into your chosen form or genre, developed in consultation with your supervisor. You learn via one-to-one tutorials with your personal supervisor. You produce two pieces of writing:
- a creative dissertation – a portion of a novel, a body of poetry, a play screenplay or other creative form of no more than 15,000 words; and
- a critical essay of approximately 3,000 words – considering the relationships between your own writing and the literary contexts/theoretical concerns that inform published writing in your chosen genre or form.
Your supervisor must agree in advance the final structure, approximate word length and for presentation conventions of these pieces.
Optional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Career opportunities
Graduates from this course will develop a range of skills desirable to employers, such as:
- communication skills
- self-management
- meticulousness in editing and presentation
- the ability to reflect and respond to constructive criticism
- the ability to write for particular purposes
- the ability to work constructively with others
These skills could help you pursue a career as a writer or in publishing. As well as in journalism, advertising and marketing, film, television, radio, arts management, new media, business, teaching and therapeutic fields.
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.
The Creative Writing and Publishing MA benefits from the input of a dynamic Advisory Board. The Board is involved in the course's development and keen to contribute. Each member gives guest lectures and contributes to placement and dissertation study, members include:
- Valerie Brandes, Founder and Publishing Director, Jacaranda Arts Books Music
- Dr Christopher Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections, Bodleian Library
- Andrew Hansen, Vice-President, Prestel Publishing
- Caroline Hird, Sales and Marketing Director, British Medical Journal
- Nicholas Jones, Founder and Owner, Strathmore Publishing
- Philip Jones, Editor, The Bookseller
- Perminder Mann, CEO, Bonnier Books UK
- Georgina Moore, Director of Books and Publishing, Midas Public Relations
- Nick Poole, CEO, The Library and Information Association (CILIP)
- Diane Spivey, Publishing and Rights Consultant
- Kate Wilson, Founder and CEO, Nosy Crow
- Gordon Wise, Senior Literary Agent and Joint MD Book Department, Curtis Brown Group
We maintain links with institutions and organisations including:
- Writers' Centre Kingston, Kingston University's literary cultural centre dedicated to creative writing in all its forms, with an exciting, vibrant annual programme of events from talks to workshops to festivals
- the Rose Theatre in Kingston, where we hold regular readings in the Culture Cafe and periodic interviews with major writers such as Hilary Mantell, Sebastian Faulks and Elif Shafak
- our Writers in Residence are professional writers, often award-winners in their particular forms or genres
- links with publishers, agents, literary festival organisers and authors, who offer useful networking opportunities
Teaching and assessment
You'll be taught and assessed through essays, reports, presentations, briefs, research projects and portfolios.
When not attending timetabled sessions, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This typically involves reading and analysing articles, regulations, policy documents and key texts, documenting individual projects, preparing coursework assignments and completing your PEDRs, etc.
Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, the library and CANVAS, the University's online virtual learning platform.
At Kingston University, we know that postgraduate students have particular needs and therefore we have a range of support available to help you during your time here.
Year 1: 8% scheduled learning and teaching
Contact hours will vary depending on which modules you choose on this combined course.
Type of teaching and learning
- Scheduled learning and teaching: 152 hours
- Guided independent study (self-managed time): 1648 hours
Please note: the above breakdowns are a guide calculated on core modules only. Depending on optional modules chosen, this breakdown may change.
Assessment typically comprises exams (e.g. test or exam), practical (e.g. presentations, performance) and coursework (e.g. essays, reports, self-assessment, portfolios, dissertation). The approximate percentage for how you will be assessed on this course is as follows, though depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose:
- Year 1: Coursework 100%
Please note: the above breakdowns are a guide calculated on core modules only. Depending on optional modules chosen, this breakdown may change.
We aim to provide feedback on assessments within 20 working days.
As a one-year full-time student, you'll be expected to attend 2–3 days a week. We also offer a part-time study option to help you fit your MA around other commitments.
To give you an indication of class sizes, this course normally enrols 5–10 students and lecture sizes are normally 10–20. However, this can vary by module and academic year.
Fees and funding
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £10,300 |
| Part Time | £5,665 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £17,600 |
| Part Time | £9,680 |
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £9,900 |
| Part Time | £5,445 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £16,900 |
| Part Time | £9,295 |
Funding support for postgraduate students
If you are a UK student living in England and under 60, you can apply for a loan to study for a postgraduate degree on the government's website.
Scholarships and bursaries
For students interested in studying Creative Writing and Publishing MA at Kingston, there are several opportunities to seek funding support:
The Inspire the Future Scholarship offers a 40% reduction in fees for taught masters or postgraduate diploma courses with September start dates. 20 scholarships are available for progressing Kingston University graduates.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Inspire the Future Scholarship page.
International postgraduate students could receive up to £5,000 towards tuition in their first year of study.
For more information on how to apply for these scholarships, visit the International Scholarship page.
If you are a Kingston University 2024/25 undergraduate progressing to a 2025/26 postgraduate degree (taught or research), you could get a 15% reduction in tuition fees.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Postgraduate Progression Scholarship page.
Kingston University offers a 10% discount on full and part-time postgraduate degree course tuition fees to our alumni.
For more information on how to apply for this discount, visit our alumni discount page.
Additional course costs
Some courses may require additional costs beyond tuition fees. When planning your studies, you’ll want to consider tuition fees, living costs, and any extra costs that might relate to your area of study.
Your tuition fees include costs for teaching, assessment and university facilities. So your access to libraries, shared IT resources and various student support services are all covered. Accommodation and general living expenses are not covered by these fees.
Where applicable, additional expenses for your course may include:
Our libraries have an extensive collection of books and journals, as well as open-access computers and laptops available to rent. However, you may want to buy your own computer or personal copies of key textbooks. Textbooks may range from £50 to £250 per year. And a personal computer can range from £100 to £3,000 depending on your course requirements.
While most coursework is submitted online, some modules may require printed copies. You may want to allocate up to £100 per year for hard-copies of your coursework. It’s worth noting that 3D printing is never compulsory. So if you choose to use our 3D printers, you’ll need to pay for the material. This ranges from 3p per gram to 40p per gram.
Kingston University will pay for all compulsory field trips. Fees for optional trips can range from £30 to £350 per trip.
Your tuition fees don’t cover travel costs. To save on travel costs, you can use our free intersite bus service. This route links the campuses and halls of residence with local train stations - Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, and Norbiton.
How to apply
Before you apply
Please read the entry criteria carefully to make sure you meet all requirements before applying.
How to apply online
Use the course selector drop down at the top of this page to choose your preferred course, start date and mode, then click 'Apply now'. You will be taken to our Online Student Information System (OSIS) where you will complete your application.
If you’re starting a new application, you’ll need to select ‘new user’ and set up a username and password. This will allow you to save and return to your application.
Application deadlines
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Applications will close when the course is full.
Information required to confirm your place
If English is not your first language, we will require proof of your proficiency to allow us to confirm your place on the course. This will generally be either an IELTS or TOEFL test certificate, which can be forwarded to us after you have submitted your application. If you do not hold a formal English language qualification, please indicate how you have acquired your proficiency in written and spoken English.
After you have applied
If the admission tutor wishes to see a portfolio from you, you will be sent an email within three weeks of the date of the email request. This will ask you to upload your zipped portfolio to the OSIS portal.
If the admissions tutor requires further information or wishes to invite you to an interview, they will contact you directly. You will then hear whether your application has been successful.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Find out more about course changes
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
Insights from industry experts
The masterclasses are an excellent way to learn about different job roles in the publishing industry. The speakers work in all areas of publishing so it's very insightful to hear different perspectives on the business. It also gives you the opportunity to ask questions and get first-hand answers from professionals. It can be a great way to network too - I ended up securing a work placement at Weidenfeld & Nicolson by talking to publishing director, Alan Samson, before he gave a masterclass.
Research
Creative writing research at Kingston University covers:
- 19th- and 20th-century British and American fiction
- fictions of globalisation
- modernism
- gothic writing
- travel writing
- narratives of slavery
- women's writing from the 18th century to the present
- New Woman and fin de siècle fictions
- Shakespeare
- literature of the English Reformation period
- English women's religious poetry during the seventeenth century
- postcolonial studies
Our lecturers publish all the time – whether it is academic research, industry-leading text books or writing for the national or trade press. Applications for research study with us are very welcome.
At masters level, we have a vibrant programme of industry dissertation supervision for our MA dissertations. In 2018, a Kingston MA student won the prestigious Association for Publishing Education Award for the best dissertation at masters level for her work on publishing for autistic children.
Associate Professor Alison Baverstock has carried out ground-breaking work into the nature of self-publishing and how it is impacting the wider industry. She is currently overseeing four PhD students and also has extensive experience of overseeing PhD by Publication.
