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Why study Creative Writing at Wolverhampton?

There’s never been a more exciting time to be a writer! Authors are now experimenting with self-publishing, e-publishing, innovative forms and finding new ways of reaching their audiences.

‌We believe that writing is a discipline and craft worth studying and teaching, so we’re one of a handful of UK Universities which has a separate and independent Creative and Professional subject area. It is also one of the only courses in the country to combine creative and professional writing, giving it a real emphasis on employability.

Studying Creative and Professional Writing combines the practice of writing for different audiences and in different contexts and genres with the development of a reflective and critical understanding of writing. You will create, analyse and interpret different forms and styles of writing, focusing on three broad themes: craft of writing; reading as a writer; and working as a writer.

Student writing, both in the classroom and in individual conferences, is the heartbeat of this subject. In all your creative and professional writing modules, you can expect to spend time exploring theory and technique, learning from the work of established writers, experimenting through writing exercises and producing your own original pieces.

Creative and Professional Writing can be studied either on its own as a specialist degree, or jointly with another subject (see choices below). We also have the option for you to study Creative and Professional Writing with Foundation Year.

Choose to study it with one of the following:

Meet the Team

‌You’ll be taught by published writers whose books cover a wide range of creative, professional and critical disciplines (fiction, poetry, non-fiction, scholarly, etc.)  We also invite special visiting lecturers from the world of publishing as well as internationally renowned authors to speak on our modules.

We’re a small subject team, but our students rank us highly in the NSS as being very approachable and highly enthusiastic about what we teach. The following provides a brief overview of the Creative and Professional Writing team’s writing and research interests.

See our individual profiles (below) for details on research interests and wider professional activities.

Name and Contact DetailsWriting and Research Interests

Dr Paul McDonald

p.j.mcdonald@wlv.ac.uk

Course Leader for BA Creative and Professional Writing

Novels include: Surviving Sting and Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle

As well as an award-winning poet, Paul is a highly respected UK expert on humour and has published numerous scholarly articles on the subject.

Candi Miller

c.miller@wlv.ac.uk

Blended Learning Coordinator for Creative & Professional Writing

Novels include Salt and Honey and Kalahari Passage, which have both been translated into other languages and shortlisted as “hidden gems” by The Guardian and Amazon.

She is currently doing world-class research on San folktales, and her other Interests include enhanced e-books and e-publishing.

Jackie Pieterick

J.M.Pieterick@wlv.ac.uk

Course Leader for MA in Transmedia Screen Writing

She recently co-authored a teacher training book entitled Giving Students Effective Written Feedback and is currently writing an e-book on American film noir.

Her research and writing interests include the short story, culinary crime fiction, film noir and how new technologies are revolutionizing the way we tell stories.

Employability

As well as gaining transferable skills and entrepreneurial ways of thinking valued in the workplace, this subject specifically prepares you for a diversity of writing occupations in journalism, marketing and technical writing. Some of our former students have gone on to become published novelists and poets, song-writer musicians, web content writers and designers, writing teachers and copy editors.