MA Creative Writing and Publishing

at Bournemouth University

Core units:
 

• Writing Fiction: The creative writer must learn to critically examine their own work and the work of others. Here, in a workshop environment, you will develop your skills as a writer of prose fiction by developing your own writing and responding to critical feedback from your peers.

• Narrating Identities: Self, Text & the World: This unit aims to provide you with a sophisticated knowledge and understanding of cultural and critical influences on a range of texts and literary media, exploring how literary, philosophical, and aesthetic movements have been used to define, construct and represent the self across the 20th and 21st centuries.

• Interactive Storytelling: Using a narratological and creative approach, you will study the development and nature of the art of storytelling in the context of digital-interactive media.

• Publishing Cultures and Materialities: From the eras of Cuneiform to Kindle, you'll study public writing as material objects, which have an economy, history and culture. Publishing as we’ve known it stems from a specific iteration of those conditions and is now shifting into the online new. To take advantage of the opportunities and challenges this development affords, you'll therefore look at fiction from this material sociological perspective.

• Marketing & PR for Writers: This unit will equip you with the knowledge and marketing skills needed by writers and publishers, regardless of the format. You will develop your own ‘brands’ online and will have the opportunity to work on real-life projects for Fresher Publishing, devising marketing and PR strategies to raise awareness/sales of the Fresher Writing Prize and the Fresher Writing anthology.

• Design, Editing & Publishing: The aim of this unit is to enable you to evaluate and practice the significant processes of professional publishing. It seeks to equip you with the knowledge and skills needed by writers, editors and other professionals in the publishing industry by engaging in real publishing projects for Fresher Publishing, the university’s own publishing press.

• Dissertation/Major Project: You may choose between a purely theoretical, academic dissertation or a major creative writing project supported by either a reflective or ‘route to publication’ rationale. By bringing together the skills, craft, theories, knowledge and critical insight you have developed during the programme, you will hone your individual strengths and establish lines of enquiry that may take you onto further doctoral study or into future careers.

Resources

MA Creative Writing and Publishing students are immersed in a vibrant media culture and have access to an extraordinary range of multimedia facilities, including radio studios. This offers the potential for students to produce audio clips for their author websites (produced in the Marketing and PR unit) and even full length audio books.

You will be working on industry relevant software, including Indesign and Photoshop, and will also have the opportunity to use the university’s own software – Genarrator – for producing interactive narratives.

Programme specification

Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. 

General entry requirements

The entry requirements for this course are:
 

• A Bachelors Honours degree with 2:2 in a required subject of Communication, Creative Writing, English, Literacy, Cultural Studies, Film, History or Philosophy.

The admissions team will look at your online application including your qualifications, personal statement and any work experience. We may ask you to provide a portfolio and/or take part in an online interview if you do not meet our entry requirements.

International entry requirements

Please see below some examples of the qualifications for entry:
 

• India: Bachelor’s degree (4 years) from a recognised HE institution with a minimum overall result of 55%

• Nigeria:  Bachelor's degree from a recognised institution with a minimum classification of 2:2

• Thailand:  Thai Bachelor's (Honours) degree from a recognised higher education institution with a minimum GPA of 2.5/4.0

• Turkey: Bachelor’s degree (Lisans Diplomasi - four years) with a minimum overall GPA of 2.3/4.0

• Vietnam:  Bachelor's degree/Bang tot nghiep dai hoc with an average score of 6.5/10, or a Master’s degree/Thac si.

All applications will be subject to a minimum grade and your degree may need to be in a relevant subject area.

English language requirements

If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally:
 

• IELTS (Academic) 6.5 with minimum 6.0 in writing, speaking, listening and reading or equivalent.

Annual tuition fees:
 

•  £8,500 (UK, ROI & CI)

• £15,000 (Int'l)  

This course will provide you with a wide range of skills for employment in the media and communication-related industries including:
 

• Authorship

• Media writing

• Publishing

• Journalism

• Advertising

• Public relations

• Teaching