Creative  and  Critical  Writing 

Our course provides you with the opportunity to work over an extended period on a collection of short stories, a novel or a collection of poems under the individual supervision of a writer actively publishing in your field.

Your creative work will be accompanied by a critical commentary; researching this element will ensure that you are well read in your chosen field and have a good knowledge of current trends in writing.

You will be joining a vibrant postgraduate community and a School with significant experience in teaching creative writing at postgraduate level. Creative writing staff include published and award-winning authors.

Our students are successful. A number of recent graduates have successfully published collections of poems or short stories that have arisen from their studies here at Bangor.

The programme fully prepares you for a future career as a writer and as an academic. A number of recent or existing creative writing students have successfully published collections of poems or short stories that have arisen from their studies here at Bangor.

You will also acquire skills that can be applied in other contexts, for example editing, publishing, journalism or arts administration. The ability to use language fluently and persuasively is essential for success in almost any field, and the flexibility of working across genres in this course offers an excellent grounding in creative language use.

The environment in Bangor couldn’t be better for studying creative writing, situated as it is between the mountains and the sea. It is a place where creativity, is the norm rather than the exception.

The expertise of Creative Writing staff lies in the craft of language and storytelling within the broad context of professional practice. Creative writing staff at Bangor publish in the major forms of short fiction, the novel and poetry, their research spanning criticism and practice-based contributions to these areas.  

Staff are internationally recognised experts in their chosen field, bringing knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching.  The department has an active community of research students and offers research supervision in a range of specialist areas, including:  Poetry, Short story writing, Experimental writing, Ecopolitics.

English Literature & Creative Writing research interests are varied in period and approach. Ongoing and new areas of research in Creative Writing include adaptation, experimentation and translation and creative writing, approached from a range of perspectives and theoretical angles, informed by gender, social class, ideology, as well as the relationships between literature and the arts, literature and geography and literature and religion.