Creative Writing

Embark on this creative practice-based PhD and craft your literary masterpiece. Explore creative and critical practices and be inspired by our award-winning writers and the bustling literary scene on campus and in Birmingham.

Develop your creative and critical practice, whether you're looking for the right environment to work on an extended writing project or want to conduct practice-based research to prepare for an academic career.

You'll join an interdisciplinary Film and Creative Writing department where you'll be supported by writers in your chosen form, whether that's prose, poetry, scriptwriting or hybrid and new forms.

This PhD builds on your writing experience, which might be from an MA in Creative Writing, or from professional publication. By the end of the PhD you'll produce a creative work of publishable quality and complementary critical document.

You can choose to create a long form work or a sequence of related works for your creative document. In the critical document you'll present a structured argument showing your awareness of literary contexts and critical and creative processes.

Our researchers are writers who explore innovative forms of writing. We offer research specialisms across many modes and genres, such as: novels, ecopoetics, live performance, translation, transnational fiction, prose poetry, short stories and screenwriting.

You're welcome to explore traditional forms of prose, poetry or screenwriting, experiment with hybrid forms, or produce creative writing for performance. Whichever form you select, you'll be encouraged and challenged to think critically about your writing process and consider the wider literary context you're writing into.

- Share your writing at departmental events and connect with fellow writers.

- Discover the latest literary and writing trends at conferences and seminars held by research centres in our School of English, Drama and Creative Studies.

- Get support from our award-winning published authors on your creative project and develop your ability to critically reflect on your writing process.

- Join a city that loves literature and writing as much as you do – discover literature festivals, poetry festivals and Europe’s largest regional library in Birmingham city centre.