Full of creative writing talent and ideas? Let us add the expertise.
Unique is a great way to describe the postgraduate creative writing programme at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. For a start, we put genre fiction front and centre in our course. If you love science fiction, fantasy, crime or horror, most MFAs and MAs don't want to know - but we embrace great genre writing and people who want to write it.
Another unique focus at Edinburgh Napier is comics and graphic novels, which most other programmes ignore. In fact, we love this medium so much we devote an entire module about it, Writing Graphic Fiction. [Good news: no talent for drawing required!] We also specialise in Young Adult fiction, with acclaimed YA author Laura Lam leading a new module on this.
No poetry?
Edinburgh Napier's creative writing MA does not offer a poetry option. We repeat, poetry is not a requirement. There are plenty of other great courses with brilliant poets on the faculty - if you want to study poetry, seek them out. We have had prize-winning poets as students on our programme, but we don't teach or critique poetry.
No peer review workshops?
There are also no peer review workshops in Creative Writing MA classes at Edinburgh Napier. We repeat, no peer review workshops. This boggles the mind of some people, as such workshops are the dominant teaching method for creative writing pretty much everywhere else. But we don't have them in our classes. Not one!
Instead, we set frequent writing assignments and expect you to bring the results to class. You're encouraged to critically self-reflect on your work [with prompts from us], and to share that thinking. You get professional editorial feedback on your writing and your self-reflection skills, delivered masterclass-style in class. And you get six hours of one-to-one mentoring.
Write Together: Edinburgh Napier & Seton Hill
As a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University, you can now earn your MFA – and finish the book you started at Edinburgh Napier – through the Writing Popular Fiction programme at Seton Hill.
Beginning in January 2017, alumni from Edinburgh Napier University can enroll in the Writing Popular Fiction programme at Seton Hill and earn an MFA by taking 34 credits (instead of the usual 54) and attending four residencies (instead of six).