Course overview

As the birthplace of Charles Dickens and the home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and HG Wells, Portsmouth’s rich literary history will inspire you as a creative writing student. With a seaside backdrop, the buzz of a city and the excitement of university life all around you, you'll write sonnets and film scripts, fairy tales and one-act plays, travel articles and sci-fi stories.

Creative writing blends academic and practical study in a range of classes taught by professional novelists, poets and playwrights. From a starting point of ‘Autobiography – The Self on the Page’ you go on to explore the beginnings of taletelling itself, learning the techniques of myth and epic poetry and use ancient tricks to create your own new work. There are opportunities to post reviews online, publish stories in our yearly anthology or speak at an open-mic night.

Our courses allow you to specialise in short story or play writing, poetry or screen writing, plus take units entitled Writing For Children, Fact and Fiction and Travel Writing to enhance your literary profile.

The benefit of combining these writing practices with an interdisciplinary subject is that you will be able to write about, understand, criticise and perform writing, taking the leap from just working with words on the page. You will become an informed writer who has an array of skills beyond writing, ensuring that you have a diverse and enviable range of abilities that will transport you onto your chosen career path.

Course content

Combining English with creative writing will give you a new perspective on literary texts while cultivating your own writing skills. You will study a core of literary history and theory with an exciting range of options, including Shakespeare, the Romantics, Dickens, Magical Realism, Women's Writing and Avant-Garde fiction. What you learn in these lectures and seminars can be put into practice in your creative work as you become a specialist writer in prose, poetry or philosophical modes.

Subject topics include:

• True Stories
• Telling Tales
• Trick, Tips and Techniques
• Literary History
• Literary Theory
• The Short Story
• The Script
• Poetry for Page and Stage
• Writing for Children
• Travel Writing
• Fact and Fiction

Teaching and assessment

Students at Portsmouth experience considerable intellectual freedom and choice, with specialist options built into the programme to enable personal exploration. The University’s electives programme widens this choice further by allowing you to take courses from around the University, including languages, community volunteering, business enterprise and music. You will be given the opportunity to contribute to the annual creative writing anthology, Borderlines. In addition, the dissertation or special exercise in your third year (which is worth a third of the total mark during the final year) is based on a topic that you select.

Assessment takes many forms and you may be assessed via a short story, a novel in progress, a screenplay, a collection of poems, a video production or even a group presentation. You might also sit an exam, write a report or develop a research portfolio. Overall, we have sought to develop assessments that allow you to demonstrate a range of skills and talents.

Lecturers at Portsmouth have a wealth of creative writing experience in all of the forms studied – prose, poetry and script. They will ensure that you are taught the exact skills that publishers and producers are looking for and their continuous professional development (research, conferences, courses and consultancy) means that you will always benefit from up-to-date developments in practice.

Career prospects

You will graduate with a unique set of communication and research skills, complemented by professional practical capabilities. We encourage our students to actively seek work experience and extra-curricular activities if they wish to pursue a career working in or with the media and creative industries. The University's Purple Door Careers and Recruitment Services is available to help students find placements.

Possible career destinations include creative writing (prose, poetry and script), copywriting, publishing, advertising and marketing, arts and events management, local and community broadcasting, teaching and increasingly, many of our students pursue further postgraduate study.

Facilities and features

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).