The Centre for Creative Writing
The Centre for Creative Writing at City University London is a special place.
We believe in enabling writers to be published, produced and performed. That is why our three MAs demand the completion of either a full-length play, novel, screenplay or non-fiction book - for the simple reason that there is no other way to learn how to write. You complete the work and you make it ready to go out there and be sold.
Add to that our location in the heart of London - within walking distance of key agents, publishers, theatres, production companies. This gives us unparalleled links with industry professionals. But it also means we can attract the very best writers - working writers - as tutors and mentors and lecturers.
Our students have gone on to....
Guest Writers visit every term
Every term, writers visit the Centre to give us insights into their work and working methods:
This term, the Novel Writing MA has no less than three guest authors... First to join us is A.M. Homes, who is in London for the Women's (formerly Orange) Prize for Fiction - her latest novel May We Be Forgiven having been shortlisted. She is the author of This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as two short-story collections. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages and she has also created original television pilots for HBO, FX and CBS and was a writer/producer of the series The L Word. UPDATE: After vising City, A.M. Homes went on to win the Women's Prize. Our congratulations to her.
Second to visit us is also from New York, novelist Jonathan Dee, in London for the publication of his latest, A Thousand Pardons. He is best known for The Privileges, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald. He is the author of four other novels The Lover of History, The Liberty Campaign, St. Famous and Palladio. He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University.
And in a return to British novelists, our third visiting author is Evie Wyld, coming to celebrate the publication of her new book All The Birds, Singing. Her first novel, After The Fire, A Still Small Voice won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award.[3] and was also shortlisted for both the Orange Award for New Writers and International IMPAC Award. Earlier this year she was included in the Granta list of Twenty Best Young Writers.
Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem has been described as 'theatre for the mind, heart and soul'. The writer visited City University London in November 2011 and talked to MA students about how he was inspired to write the play as well as some of his process.
Screenwriter and playwright Mike Leigh has visited the course three times, most recently to speak about his film Another Year. He spoke to students about the film's shifting protagonist, his work with actors and the themes and development of the film.
Last term, our guest author was Sarah Waters. She is the author of five novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), which won the Betty Trask Award; Affinity (1999), which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award; Fingersmith (2002) which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize as was The Night Watch (2006). Her latest novel is The Little Stranger (2009), also shortlisted for the Man Booker.
Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. His books include The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man's Gate, Small Wars, Small Mercies, and Mother Country. Jeremy spoke to our creative writing non-fiction students recently about his memoir, a true story about adoption, secrets and the need to belong.
