MA Creative Writing - (Canterbury & Paris)

Designed with serious, ambitious writers in mind, this innovative and interdisciplinary MA programme combines taught modules and a dissertation, and allows you to share your year between Canterbury and Paris.

Overview

Through seminars, tutorials, workshops, and precise editing, you will learn to take control of your own work and write exciting, contemporary material.

A cross-cultural, interdisciplinary programme, you spend your first term at our Canterbury campus with full access to its excellent academic and recreational facilities. In the spring term, you relocate to the Paris School of Arts and Culture where you study at the Columbia Global Center (known as Reid Hall) in a historic corner of Montparnasse. You visit Paris in the autumn term, where you meet our Paris staff and are taken on a tour of the city. We offer advice and support to help you relocate to Paris.

In your final term, you complete your MA by writing a portfolio of creative work defined in collaboration with your academic supervisors.

About the School of English

The School of English has a strong international reputation and global perspective, apparent both in the background of its staff and in the diversity of our teaching and research interests.

Our expertise ranges from the medieval to the postmodern, including British, American and Irish literature, postcolonial writing, 18th-century studies, Shakespeare, early modern literature and culture, Victorian studies, modern poetry, critical theory and cultural history.

Teaching and assessment

You take a total of four modules, for which you will produce approximately 7,000 words each (or an equivalent number of poems or translations). In addition, you write a creative dissertation of about 12,000 words (or an equivalent number of poems or translations).

Programme aims

This programme aims to:

• provide you with the opportunity to obtain a postgraduate qualification (MA) in one year, and to allow you, if required, a smooth transition to doctoral studies
• give you the breadth of experience of studying creative writing modules in Canterbury in the Autumn term, and then spending the Spring term in Paris writing ‘in residence’ while pursuing one other Kent at Paris module
• extend and deepen your understanding of your own writing practice through coursework and research
• enable you to develop an historical awareness of literary and creative writing traditions, particularly those that have been located in, or in some other way focussed on, Paris develop your independent critical thinking and judgement
• develop your independent creative thinking and practice

Careers

Many career paths can benefit from the writing and analytical skills that you develop as a postgraduate student in the School of English. Our students have gone on to work in academia, journalism, broadcasting and media, publishing, writing and teaching; as well as more general areas such as banking, marketing analysis and project management.