creative writing jobs leicester

The browser you are using is no longer supported and for that reason you will not get the best experience when using our website.

You currently have JavaScript disabled in your web browser, please enable JavaScript to view our website as intended.

English at Leicester

• Midlands4Cities
• Application process
• Resources and facilities

PhD in Creative Writing

Pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Leicester means becoming part of an exciting and dynamic research and creative environment.

The PhD programme helps give structure to your creative project, and invites you to ask searching questions about your practice, to reflect on the process of producing creative work, and so to write a long critical-reflective essay (usually 15-20,000 words) to accompany the creative work. The creative body of work normally makes up 70% of the PhD, and the reflective thesis 30%.

At its broadest, the emphasis is on trying to comprehend the practice of creation itself - surely one of the most fascinating subjects imaginable.

Creative Writing doctorates lead to a variety of potential career paths. These include novelist, poet, playwright or screenwriter, of course, but there are many related industries that Creative Writing research degree graduates nationally have gone on to work in, including (but not limited to):

• TV storyline writing
• Video game creation
• TV and film production
• Working as a literary agent
• Teaching or lecturing
• Working as a professional stand-up comedian
• Post-doctoral academic research
• Public relations
• Advertising & marketing
• Political research & speech writing
• Arts management
• Content provision
• Tweet writing
• Web editing
• Franchise creation
• Branding consultancy
• Literary and other arts events management
• Intellectual property advising

Application information

It is a good idea to make informal enquiries to the lecturer you believe might be interested in supervising your PhD, prior to making a formal application.

• List of English at Leicester staff  
• Recent creative publications by students and staff  

You should have a strong creative and academic track record - entry requirements are an MA or similar in Creative Writing and some prior publication history.

Otherwise, you should have compelling evidence of advanced writing experience, and an awareness of the technical and reflective elements of creative writing practice in an academic environment.

Your application should consist of a persuasive outline for a creative project: a body of poetry, a novel, a work of creative non-fiction, a graphic novel or a substantial film script. This should be accompanied by a theoretical and canonical series of questions that you believe will prove relevant as the creative work progresses.

You should be conscious of the fact that the critical element of a creative PhD is not separate literary critical study - although it may involve such. It is involved in the deeper comprehension of the creative process itself through an articulation of creative practice. As such it may involve historical, ethnographic, practice-based philosophical, social scientific and other theoretical models.

Places on the PhD are awarded on the basis of the quality of the creative sample submitted and the originality of the proposal.

Audio clip: Gwynne Harries discusses his Creative PhD

Listen to PhD student Gwynne Harries discuss his Creative PhD in Welsh Poetic Forms in English Verse.

0115 7934110

• No products in the cart.

Writing Groups – Leicestershire

< Back to Regions

Lost your password?

EAST MIDLANDS WRITING GROUPS

< Back to Writing Groups

Creative Writing

In this section.

• Drawing, Painting, and Printing
• Pottery and Creative Glass
• Pay as you Go Pottery
• Textiles and Sewing
• Jewellery and Craft
• History and Literature
• Health and Wellbeing

Our Creative Writing courses aim to equip learners with the skills needed to confidently develop their individual writing style. Learners are encouraged to read for pleasure and critical analysis. These courses have a positive impact on creativity, wellbeing, and the way writers interpret and present the world.  This year our courses look at a range of different authors, explore a range of techniques, from editing work to creating authentic and memorable characters, to looking at different genres such as ghost stories and science.

We use cookies to enable us to provide the best user experience on this website. We use necessary cookies to make our website work, and we'd also like to set analytics cookies that help us make improvements by measuring how you use our site. Third-party content may also set additional cookies. These will be set only if you consent to the use of all cookies. For more information about the cookies we set, see our  cookie policy .

• About this site
• About Creative Writing at Leicester
• Featured authors
• Professional Writing & Publishing
• Index of Authors

Saturday 27 April 2024

Imtiaz dharker, "shadow reader".

Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and video film maker, awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, Chancellor of Newcastle University. Her seven collections, all published by Bloodaxe Books, include Over the Moon and the latest, Shadow Reader . Her poems have featured widely on BBC radio, television, the London Underground, Glasgow billboards and Mumbai buses. She has had eleven solo exhibitions of drawings and also scripts and directs video films, many of them for non-government organisations working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children in India. 

Wednesday 24 April 2024

Michael w. thomas, "a time for such a word".

Michael W. Thomas ’s latest poetry collection is A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (KDP / Swan Village Reporter). He has published nine poetry collections, two collections of short fiction and three novels. His work has appeared in, among others, The  Antigonish Review (Canada), The Antioch Review (US), Critical Survey , The London Magazine , Pennine Platform , the TLS and Under the Radar . He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland). From 2004 to 2009, he was poet-in-residence at the Robert Frost Festival, Key West, Florida. He contains no (well, few) additives. His website is here . His blog is The Swan Village Reporter .

Monday 22 April 2024

Rory waterman, "come here to this gate".

Rory Waterman was born in Belfast in 1981, and grew up mainly in Lincolnshire. His fourth full-length collection, Come Here to This Gate , has just been published by Carcanet Press. His other collections, all published by Carcanet, are: Tonight the Summer’s Over (2013), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award; Sarajevo Roses (2017), which was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize for Second Collections; and Sweet Nothings (2020). He is also regularly a critic for the TLS , PN Review and other publications, and has published several books on modern and contemporary poetry. He co-edits New Walk Editions with Nick Everett at the University of Leicester. He has a BA and PhD from the University of Leicester. Since 2012, he has worked at Nottingham Trent University, where he is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature and leads the MA in Creative Writing. He lives in Nottingham. His website is here . 

You can read more about Come Here to This Gate on the publisher's website here . You can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here . Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Come here to This Gate , by Rory Waterman

Monday 15 April 2024

Vic pickup, "the omniscient tooth fairy".

Vic Pickup is the author of Lost & Found (Hedgehog Press, 2020), What Colour is My Brain? (co-written with Jules Whiting, Hedgehog Press 2022) and The Omniscient Tooth Fairy (Indigo Dreams, 2023). She has also edited an anthology, Reading Poets , forthcoming in June 2024 from Two Rivers Press. Vic is a co-organiser of Poets Café Reading and the town’s Stanza group. Her website is here .

You can read more about The Omniscient Tooth Fairy on the publisher's website here . Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From The Omniscient Tooth Fairy

Him, building me a bookcase

Friday 12 April 2024

A. j. lees, "neurological birdsong".

Andrew Lees was born on Merseyside and is a Professor of Neurology at The National Hospital, Queen Square and University College London. He is in the top three most highly cited Parkinson’s disease researchers in the world and included in Thomson Reuters 2015 List of the Worlds Most Scientific Minds.  He has written the authorised biography of the Arsenal and Liverpool football player Ray Kennedy who developed Parkinson’s disease in his early thirties ( Ray of Hope , Penguin 1994) and which was made into a television documentary, Liverpool the Hurricane Port (Random House 2011) a book about his home city, Alzheimer's: T he Silent Plague  (2012 Penguin) and William Richard Gowers (1845-1915) Exploring the Victorian Brain , a biography of William Gowers. His book,  Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions) published in 2016, explains his unlikely association with the author of Naked Lunch and his curiosity to find neurological cures. Brazil That Never Was , an investigation of saudade, was published by New York Review of Books in the USA. Lees's quest for a new viewpoint in the Amazon led to an unlikely linkage with Ciro Guerra’s film Embrace of the Serpent and a joint presentation with him at the premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. His previous book, entitled Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology , was published by New York Review of Books in April 2022 and was a plea for a return to soulful compassionate medicine.  Lees has also written essays published in Dublin Review of Books , Literary Review , Empty Mirror , Tears in the Fence , The New York Review of Books , The Polyphony , and the Scottish Review of Books .  He is a free thinker who has dedicated his recent years to reminding the scientific community that medicine is an art and that literary and science fiction can inform understanding.

Wednesday 10 April 2024

Daniel lawless, "i tell you this now".

Daniel Lawless is the author most recently of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With ; his current book, I Tell You This Now was released in March, 2024. Recent poems appear in FIELD , Barrow Street , Prairie Schooner , Ploughshares , Poetry International , Los Angeles Review , upsteet , SOLSTICE , Manhattan Review , Massachusetts Review , JAMA , and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. , among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume:  A Journal of Contemporary Poetry , Plume Editions, and the annual Plume Poetry anthologies.

Monday 8 April 2024

Carrie etter, "grief's alphabet".

Grief’s Alphabet is Carrie Etter ’s fifth collection of poetry. Her poems have appeared in T he New Republic , The New Statesman , The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem , Poetry Review , The Times Literary Supplement , and many other journals and anthologies internationally. She is a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Bristol, and she also writes fiction, essays, and reviews. Her website is here .