This unique MA aims to meet the needs of committed writers who are interested in examining their own writing critically and exploring and exploiting their own possibilities as writers. Goldsmiths is located within easy travelling distance of central London, enabling you to draw fully on London?s rich tradition as a converging point for culturally diverse literary practices. The MA combines both Creative and Life Writing in a stimulating and enriching programme. All teaching will be led by published creative writers and biographers and you will have the opportunity to work with a range of other published writers who will be invited to visit Goldsmiths to give readings and lead workshops. You will acquire a critical awareness of recent writing and literary concerns, and develop your writing skills within that context. You also examine relevant literary and cultural theories as well as the politics and practicalities of language and writing from the writer?s point of view. You will have ample opportunity to engage with structure, form and style in relation to both Creative (poetry and fiction) and Life Writing (biography and autobiography). What you study There are three main components: ?Creative and Life Writing Workshops ?Contemporary Contexts for Creative and Life Writing ?One-to-one tutorials. There will be two core courses: a two-term workshop in Creative and Life Writing, and a one-term Contemporary Contexts for Creative and Life Writing seminar course. Workshop in Creative and Life Writing All students attend this two-hour compulsory workshop part-time students attend in their first year. In the first term you will be encouraged to experiment with a variety of genres in Creative and Life Writing, and then in the second term to develop your individual interests in poetry, fiction, autobiography and biography, or perhaps a fusion of those genres. Each term you submit a piece of your own writing together with a critical account of how you have structured and developed it. Presentations of your work to other students with an account of your aims and approaches form an additional important element. Some workshops will be taken by visiting writers, introducing you to a range of practices, concerns and techniques. The workshop also enables you to debate issues raised in the Contemporary Contexts course in relation to your own practice. Contemporary Contexts for Creative and Life Writing This is a two-hour seminar course, which also occasionally includes informal talks by visiting speakers, followed by questions. These talks might be by practising writers, biographers, critics or philosophers (from both outside and inside Goldsmiths). Recent visitors have included Kazuo Ishiguro, Giles Foden, Aminatta Forna, Ian Jack and Tobias Hill. Wide-ranging topics have included: the role of the writer today in Northern Ireland, or the Caribbean writing the self the relation in contemporary fiction and biography of the two genres the relation between fictional and nonfictional autobiography writers and their readers the publishing world today postmodernism contemporary ideas about language gender and writing. In both the Contemporary Contexts course and the workshops, you will be asked to consider works by significant contemporary writers in relation to your own writing practice. Assessment is by a critical essay on a writer or literary issue. Full-time students take the Contemporary Contexts course in their first term and part-time students in their second year. Tutorials will be offered at regular intervals during the year. Options You also choose an option course lasting one term. Full-time students take this in the second term, while part-time students take this in the second year (second term). You can either choose a more specialist workshop in an aspect of Creative or Life Writing, or an option from the list of MA options offered by the Department of English and Comparative Literature including topics such as: ?European Avan
This unique MA aims to meet the needs of committed writers who are interested in examining their own writing critically and exploring and exploiting their own possibilities as writers. Goldsmiths is located within easy travelling distance of central London, enabling you to draw fully on London?s rich tradition as a converging point for culturally diverse literary practices. The MA combines both Creative and Life Writing in a stimulating and enriching programme. All teaching will be led by ...
