Do you have a story you want to tell? Do you want to develop your writing craft and share that story with the world?
At Southampton, Creative Writing is all about the power of storytelling, and we specialise in teaching our students how to tell those stories in the most popular literary forms: novels, children’s books, films, and above all life writing: autobiography, biography, memoir, popular history, and nature writing.
If these are the kind of books you want to write, our internationally acclaimed Creative Writing tutors have the professional experience to take your story from idea to reality. Your tutors will include:
Toby Litt, author of the memoirs Wrestliana and A Writer’s Diary, as well as novels translated into over fifteen languages around the world
Carole Burns, novelist, journalist, and author of the interview collection: Off the Page: Writers Talk about Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between.
Rebecca Smith, novelist and author of the literary self-help books Jane Austen’s Guide to Life’s Dilemma and The Jane Austen Writer’s Club.
Alice Hunt, author of the popular history Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade
Devorah Baum, film maker and screenwriter, co-director of The New Man and Husband, and the New Yorker Book of the Year On Marriage.
Kevin Brazil, art critic and author of the essay collection Whatever Happened to Queer Happiness?
You will be taught by these writers in small workshops and one-on-one tutorials; you can study modules to inform your work like Writing for Children and Young People or The Publishing Industry, and you will receive guest lectures by leading UK agents and editors.
Our graduates are widely published. They include Lex Croucher, the New York Times bestselling author of Gwen and Art are Not In Love, Ella Dove, author of Five Steps to Happy, as seen on TV’s Lorraine, and the award-winning children’s writer, Kieran Larwood, author of The Five Realms series.
Our graduates also go on to successful careers within the publishing industry – they include the Editorial Director at Little, Brown, Hachette UK; the Rights Executive at Profile Books and the Head of Marketing for Penguin Audiobooks.
Our Writers in Conversation series brings international renowned writers like Xialou Guo and Gish Jen to speak to our students.
Celebrating our excellence in narrative non-fiction: Southampton is also the home of the new international prize for shortform non-fiction, The Philip Hoare Prize.
We offer three ways to study Creative Writing, and we particularly encourage mature students and part-time students to apply: BA English with Creative Writing, MA Creative Writing, and the PhD in Creative Writing.
If you’d like to find out more about studying with us, please contact our Head of Creative Writing, Toby Litt.
Philip Hoare Competition 