Core and optional courses

Creative

Workshops

Workshops are led by a writer teacher and are conducted on a strict rota with two/three samples of work considered every week, and each student work-shopped twice per semester.  Students and workshop leaders analyse that week's samples providing corrections, suggestions, queries and commentary, relating to diction, pace, tone, point of view, structure, form etc.

Tutorials

For the duration of the programme, every student is assigned to one of several experienced writer-tutors with whom regular meetings are scheduled and who will help bring together the workshop and seminar elements in relation to your writing and development.

Visiting speakers

Visiting speakers in the Creative area of the MLitt will invariably be writers, and we will endeavour to represent a variety of modes and approaches. These events are often open to the School and College at large and public attendance is encouraged. Not all events will necessarily take place at the University, as the Programme works with local festivals such as Glasgow's Aye Write! as well as publishers and other event organisers. 

Assessment

Assessment is via a portfolio of work developed from your workshop work. Normally this will be no more than 25,000 words of prose, 600 lines of poetry, or the equivalent in other genres or forms (as agreed with your tutor). The portfolio represents a space in which you showcase your best work.  It can take a variety of forms and include a range of contents: poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, and experimental work.

Craft and Experimentation

Reading as a Writer (CX1)

Weekly seminars (2 hours total) on elements of craft, reading like a writer, and experimentation in your creative practice: the purpose being to develop a shared creative vocabulary and knowledge (in part, for workshop discussions) and to explore precedents and techniques for creating character, point of view, place, time and structure, and to consider related themes to give depth to your own writing and critical skills. 

Assessment is by a portfolio of creative work as per guidelines given at the start of the year.

Experimentation (CX2)

Weekly seminars (2 hours total) continuing the close reading practice of the first semester and exploring experimentation in form. 

Assessment will be by a portfolio of creative work as per guidelines given at the start of the year.

Editing and Publication

Copyright, Publishing and the Culture of Reception 

Weekly seminars that consider the legal, material, mechanical and wider cultural (media) contexts for creative work and the issues that arise from them. Book reviewing, the literary magazine, the role of the agent, the publishing contract, models of publishing, and other collaborative approaches are considered. 

Editing the Twenty-First Century: Editorial Project

This is a supervised creative or research project, either individual or collaborative, in which the student selects an activity particularly relevant to his or her creative work and produces a project in relation to it. The projects are bespoke, undertaken with the agreement of the course convenor, and can consist of: editorial work on From Glasgow to Saturn (our literary Magazine), the creation of a new web magazine or a creative site; the creation of a paper magazine or chap-book; an adaptation from one medium to another (e.g. dramatisation translation); curation of an anthology or exhibition; production or a radio play or short film; outreach activities such as workshops etc.