School of Social Science and Humanities

BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing with English Literatures

BA (Hons) Full-time 3 years

With a real emphasis upon employability, we are passionate about nurturing new voices and encourage you to explore the subjects and stories you want to write about.

With a real emphasis upon employability, we are passionate about nurturing new voices and encourage you to explore the subjects and stories you want to write about.

Award
BA (Hons)
Start date(s)
16 September 2024
UCAS Code
WQ84
Course specifications
Course length
Full-time (3 years)
Campus location
University: City Campus
UCAS points calculator

Why choose this course?

This is one of only a few courses in the UK that offers English Literatures with Creative and Professional Writing. You will have the opportunity to engage with a Learning Pathway choosing either Poetry, Prose, Professional or Specialist Writings via a range of optional modules at Level 5. These pathways are designed to both enable you to take ownership over your learning and become more specialist within your writing practice, and work as complementary to English Literatures modules. Some modules are interdisciplinary in their nature and delivery; others will offer you the opportunity to study writers of the region as your potential contemporaries, or to explore a form that can enhance written practice in terms of genre. There are also modules that will offer insight into the multicultural literary landscape that now delineates the publishing industry. This will not only better prepare you for industry and working within literary fields, but you will be equipped with the tools for the business of writing and to manage a portfolio career.

What's unique about this course?

  • With a real emphasis upon employability, we are passionate about nurturing new voices and encourage you to explore the subjects and stories you want to write about.

  • This course is one of the few in the country to combine English with creative and professional writing (most exclude the former). Thus there is a real emphasis on employability.

  • The Black Country's only dedicated Creative & Professional degree course.

  • Extensive calendar of events including the Wolverhampton Literature Festival and workshops run by acclaimed visiting writers.

  • Academic expertise, taught by published and continuing-to-be-published novelists, short story writers and poets.

  • A department that inspires and nurtures, celebrating success and achievement, where future creative careers are at the centre of our teaching.

  • Tackling a broad range of creative and professional writing strategies to encourage experimentation, critical engagement and ever-improving creative writing practice.

What happens on the course?

This programme is devised to enable writers to write and read widely around their subject; to develop skills, talent, and style within a variety of writing contexts, creative and professional. This is all enhanced by the dual focus of analysing existing literatures in terms of genre and subject and understanding how historical contexts continue to apply to our writing today. Led by a team of active published writers and leading academics in their fields of expertise, we work to the ethos that ‘as you write it, we are writing too’, offering an inclusive and supportive environment as one cohesive learning, reading, and writing community. We are aware of what writers need to do in terms of the business of writing; how our knowledge and passion for literatures enables our practice, and therefore offer a continuous platform of support and guidance alerting students to the many career routes a writer can pursue. Our new Learning Pathways programme will enable you to take ownership of your own learning from Level 5, allowing you to either pursue a more specialist approach to your writing, mastering your medium, work across the different forms and styles of writing we study, or opt for literatures-based modules to complement practice. The programme will introduce you to the relevant concepts and theories associated with writing and readerships, and encourage you to work across disciplines via our collaborative partnerships with the School of Art.

A dedicated Writing Week in Week 7 brings the whole cohort together - UG and PG students - as one learning community, offering dedicated writing spaces and access to authors and industry experts. This degree will not only nurture your reading, literary knowledge, critical skills, and practice by enabling you to foster a profound understanding of your authorial intentions and process, but enable you to communicate more effectively, and, through informal workshops, enhance your own creative and critical judgement. Consequently, you will develop a range of vital transferable skills including presentation and oral performance; social media management and digital literacy; close reading skills for editing and proof reading; enterprise and entrepreneurship; project management and working collaboratively, all of which are of immense value in graduate employment and freelance/portfolio careers.

Course Modules

Potential Career Paths

Potential Career pathways after completing this degree could include:

  • Author/Novelist
  • Copywriter
  • Journalist
  • Editor
  • Content Writer
  • Technical Writer
  • Scriptwriter for TV, Film, or Theatre
  • Public Relations Specialist
  • Marketing Communications Specialist
  • Social Media Manager
  • Blogger/Vlogger
  • Publisher
  • Literary Agent
  • Proofreader
  • Grant/Proposal Writer

Additional Information

Everything you need to know about this course!

  • Think critically, reflectively and creatively about writing

  • Engage in the comprehension, analysis and appreciation of written texts using a variety of written, oral and digital resources

  • Demonstrate key employment skills in self-management, self-discipline, digital literacy, enterprise, group and collaborative work

  • Produce artistically coherent, original and technically adept writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of medium and genre as per the authorial intention

  • Articulate both orally and in writing knowledge and understanding of texts, discourse conventions, theories and narrative strategies relevant to the study of creative and professional writing in a multicultural context

  • Be able to source, research, assimilate and articulate material relevant to the production of creative and professional writing

Location Mode Fee Year
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2022-23
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2023-24
Home Full-time £9250 per year 2024-25
International Full-time £13450 per year 2022-23
International Full-time £14450 per year 2023-24
International Full-time £14950 per year 2024-25

Additional Course Costs

Additional Field Trips: Small contribution for field trips may be requested.
Further information on these additional costs will be provided during your studies.

Further information on these additional costs will be provided prior to the start of your studies

The University is committed to a transparent fee structure, with no hidden costs, to help you make an informed decision. This includes information on what is included in the fee and how fees are calculated and reviewed

Typical entry requirement: 96 UCAS points

  • A Levels - grades CCC / BCD
  • BTEC L3 Extended Diploma or OCR Cambridge L3 Technical Extended Diploma - grades MMM
  • BTEC L3 Diploma - grades DD
  • Access to HE Diploma (60 credits) of which a minimum of 45 must be at Level 3 (96 UCAS point equivalence, minimum 45 credits at merit)

Use the UCAS Tariff calculator to check your qualifications and points

Other Requirements

Students must usually have studied for a minimum of two years post GCSE level. However, we will consider applications from mature students who do not have two years of post-16 study, where they have relevant work experience. Please see http://wlv.ac.uk/mature for further information.

'Writing my dissertation encouraged a lifelong passion and gave me the confidence to pursue academic writing professionally. I have a paper in the works that has been accepted as part of a collection curated by Fran Pheasant-Kelly by Edinburgh University press which is exciting!' - Alex Hackett

Tuition Fees Loan (Home Fee Status):

Most students will be able to apply for a loans to pay for these subject to eligibility. To find out more information please refer to the government Student Finance website.

Changes for EU students:

The UK government has confirmed that EU students starting courses from 1 August 2021 will normally be classified as having Overseas Fee status. More information about the change is available at UKCISA:

EU citizens living in the UK with 'settled' status, and Irish nationals living in the UK or Ireland, will still be classified as Home students, providing they meet the usual residency requirements, for more information about EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) click here.


Self-funding:

If you don’t want to take out a loan to pay your fees or if you aren’t eligible to receive a loan, you might want to take advantage of the University’s scheme to pay by instalments: See How to pay.

For more information please contact the Gateway.


Your employer, embassy or organisation can pay for your Tuition fees:

If your employer, embassy or organisation agrees to pay all or part of your tuition fees; the University will refer to them as your sponsor and will invoice them for the appropriate amount.

We must receive notification of sponsorship in writing as soon as possible, and before enrolment, confirming that the sponsor will pay your tuition fees.


Financial Hardship:

Students can apply to the Dennis Turner Opportunity Fund.

for help with course related costs however this cannot be used for fees or to cover general living costs.


Bursaries and Scholarships:

In addition the University also offers a range of Bursaries and Scholarships packages

You can find more information on the University’s Funding, cost, fee and support pages.

Telephone

01902 32 22 22

Email

enquiries@wlv.ac.uk

Online

Order a prospectus

How We Compare

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