Creative Writing

Key programme benefits to future students

Our Creative Writing students enjoy teaching visits and readings from outstanding contemporary authors. Visitors to UL Creative Writing have included Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Louise O’Neill, Claire Keegan, Mary O’Malley, Sara Baume, Liz Nugent, Marian Keyes, Sinead Gleeson, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford and Laureate for Irish Fiction Sebastian Barry.



Our Chair of Creative Writing is Prof Joseph O’Connor (author of nine novels including, My Father’s House, Ghost Light, The Thrill of it All, the million-selling Star of the Sea, and Shadowplay, winner of the Novel of the Year Award at the 2019 Irish Book Awards, shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Costa Novel Award, 2020). Our outstanding teachers include twice Booker Prize-longlisted Donal Ryan, (author of The Spinning Heart, From a Low and Quiet Sea and Strange Flowers), widely acclaimed Rob Doyle (Here Are the Young Men and This is the Ritual), and Irish Book Award nominee Prof Sarah Moore Fitzgerald (The Apple Tart of Hope and A Strange Kind of Brave), internationally published Young Adult author and lecturer on self-motivation for writers.

Autumn Modules

• Creative Writing 1

• Applied Editing1

• Project Development for Creative Writers



Optional Modules

Literary Modernism | Gender and Sexuality in Irish Writing | Literature, Film and Human Rights | Literature of Migration | Writing Memoir, Biography and Autobiography



Spring Modules

• Writerly Reading: Aspects of Storytelling

• Individual Creative Writing Project with Dissertation Plan

• Creative Writing 2

• A Weekly Workshop

• Applied Editing 2



Optional Modules

Politics and American Literature | Post‐Colonial Theory and Literature | Feminist Literary Theory | Textual Constructions of Cultural Identity | Utopian Theory and Texts | Public Fiction and Private Life | Issues in Modern and Contemporary Poetry | Creative Writers in the Community Creative Writers in the Community



Summer Modules

• Dissertation

Many applicants for our Creative Writing MA have a first or second class Level 8 honours degree (NFQ or other internationally recognised equivalent) but application is open to everyone, including applicants who do not have a primary degree but have what might be considered equivalent experience, perhaps in the arts, publishing, bookselling, writing, creativity or some related activity. Please note, we always receive more applications than we have places to offer.



Many applicants for our Creative Writing MA have a first or second class Level 8 honours degree (NFQ or other internationally recognised equivalent) but application is open to everyone, including applicants who do not have a primary degree but have what might be considered equivalent experience, perhaps in the arts, publishing, bookselling, writing, creativity or some related activity. Please note, we always receive more applications than we have places to offer.



Applicants must accompany their formal online application with a 3,000 word sample of their creative writing (this can be one single piece or several pieces totalling 3,000 words) and a one-page letter setting out why they would like to work with us on our MA programme as opposed to the many other Creative Writing MA programmes now available.



Previous experience of Creative Writing workshops is helpful.



The Application Portfolio is assessed by a small committee of staff, who judge submissions on their originality, technique, and readability. Please note that we are not in a position to offer feedback to applicants who are not offered a place.



Applicants must satisfy the English Language Requirements of the University.



Applications should be submitted online.



Portfolio

Admission will also be based upon a piece or pieces of creative work up to 3000 words submitted by the student as part of the application process. This might be a novel extract, a short story, a set of poems or a screenplay. This creative work will be assessed by a small committee of staff, who will judge submissions on their originality, technique, and intellectual rigour.



Supporting Statement:

Please include the following in your supporting statement submission:



Why you chose the MA Creative Writing programme at UL as opposed to other Creative Writing programmes on offer?

Indicate familiarity with Faculty teaching on the programme and their publishing record

Indicate familiarity with the MA programme structure

Personal motivations for doing the programme

1 year full-time, 2 years part-time, on campus.

Autumn

Graduate careers

Recent graduates of our Creative Writing MA have been published nationally and internationally and have won or been short-listed for major literary prizes, including the prestigious Hennessy New Writer of the Year Award, the RTE Francis McManus Award, the Listowel Writers’ Week Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, the Arts Council Next Generation Award and the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair Award.