About us
Our commitment to excellence in writing goes back a long way. This commitment was formalised in 1995 when the Masters in Creative Writing was founded by Phillip Hobsbaum and Willy Maley.
Twenty years on, we focus on teaching writing at the postgraduate level, both taught and research-led. Across all our postgraduate provision students have access to the best of the new and also develop a sense of the origins and histories of the genres they practice.
We are based in the Edwin Morgan Library, running writing courses that are among the most challenging and popular in Britain and have helped launch the career of a number of successful writers including Anne Donovan, Louise Welsh, Rodge Glass, Jen Hadfield, Zoe Strachan, Luke Brown, Laura Marney, Rachel Seiffert, William Letford, Karen Campbell, Kirsty Logan and many others.
A Place for International Writing
Lecturers and tutors on our Creative Writing programme have come from all around the world: Scotland, the Caribbean, the USA, Ireland and Mexico. We speak with different accents and dialects and bring the inflections of our ears to the things we write. We have also recruited students from around the world: Hong Kong, Sweden, Iceland, Canada, Nepal, Bahamas, Japan. We see our programme as a place where World Literature is conceived and written.
A Place for Scottish Writing
We have deep roots in Scottish Literature. Tom Leonard, James Kelman, and Alasdair Gray have held professorships here; Scottish novelists Laura Marney and Zoe Strachan presently teach on the programme. We are housed in the Edwin Morgan Room and are right beside Scotland's only department of Scottish Literature. Our part-time programme should be especially attractive for those who already live in or near the city.
A Place for New Kinds of Writing
Our staff have published and won awards in a number of genres: novels, poetry, essays, translations, literary history and criticism, radio dramas, librettos. We also write things which don't fit into any known category. We are willing to supervise students working in established genres but are just as keen to see students mix genres or create new forms.