English Literature with Creative Writing BA

Course overview

Develop your creativity and sharpen your critical abilities with this course that will equip you with valuable skills as both a reader and a writer. You’ll produce creative work across various genres, such as fiction, poetry, life writing, and travel accounts. 

You'll also learn how writers of the past and the present have used words and literary forms to express their ideas and engage with their times’ social and cultural issues. 

You’ll encounter historical and modern texts in English from around the globe, which explore themes relevant to how we live today, including race and ethnicity, gender, climate change and nature, social class, disability and wellbeing. 

Learn how to shape language to convey your ideas and experience, work in groups, discuss your writing with other students, and build an individual portfolio of work that will set you on track for a creative or cultural industries career.

Our expertise

The School of English has a long and prestigious history in creative writing. Creative Writing at Leeds has a great history of alumni and former staff, including Wole Soyinka, Geoffrey Hill, JRR Tolkien, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Hannah Copley, Luiza Sauma, literary agent Caroline Hardman, and our recent Douglas Caster Poetry Fellows Helen Mort, Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Malika Booker.

Our current staff includes UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, JR Carpenter, Kimberly Campanello, Zaffar Kunial, Sarah K. Perry, Jay Prosser, Jess Richards, Ross Raisin, Caitlin Stobie and John Whale. Our practices and passions run across creative and critical writing. They include: visual and experimental poetry; eco poetics; the contemporary novel and contemporary lyric poem; literature and medicine; disability studies; autofiction; and transgender memoir.

We are home to the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, which brings together the University’s strength and heritage in creative writing. It hosts regular poetry readings by visiting international poets and supports a poetry reading group.

We regularly host readings and talks by well-known and emerging contemporary writers and you’ll have access to a vibrant community of researchers and creative practitioners. The highly respected literary magazine, Stand, is produced in the School, and publishes the best in new and established creative writing.

Our creative writing community benefits from partnerships with llkley Literature Festival, Leeds Playhouse and Leeds Grand Theatre. We also support a thriving range of events and workshops with visiting writers. 

Specialist facilities

The world-class Brotherton Library has an array of archive, manuscript and early printed material in its Special Collections, including extensive archives of original materials from writers old and new, from the Brontë family to Tony Harrison. 

You’ll also have opportunities to learn traditional printing and typesetting techniques using our period printing presses and learn more about print and publishing history.

Take a look around our libraries:

Brotherton Library
Laidlaw Library
Edward Boyle Library

Course details

At Level 1, you will take Reading Between the Lines and Writing Matters, introducing you to university-level study, equipping you to read critically and write with rigour and persuasion. You will also take Writing Creatively to introduce you to the techniques of creative practice, and will be presented with a choice of optional modules focusing on poetry, fiction, drama, theatre and further creative approaches.

At Level 2, in addition to Developing Creative Writing, you will take two English Literature core modules, Writing Environments and Body Language. These modules explore two urgent contemporary challenges, the climate crisis and personal wellbeing, and will examine how these issues can be understood and expressed through literary texts. You will also select two modules from a choice of several options, ranging historically and geographically from Medieval to Contemporary, and from Postcolonial to American.

Level 2 will deepen and enrich subject knowledge and intellectual skills, preparing you for more independent learning at Level 3, where you can select from a range of specialist research modules.

At Level 3, you will take two core Creative Writing modules. The final year Creative Writing Project enhances active research skills, enabling you to define, plan and produce work on a literary subject of your choosing. The module Page, Publication and Audience allows you to develop an understanding of the relationship between creative writing practices and the creative industries, exploring methods of reaching your audience.

After your second year of study, you may apply for transfer to an International Degree at one of a wide range of universities with which the University of Leeds has established links. You may also spend a year in industry on a work placement as an optional third year of your degree programme

The course information shown below represents typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our terms and conditions.

Most courses consist of compulsory and optional modules. There may be some optional modules omitted below. This is because they are currently being refreshed to make sure students have the best possible experience. Before you enter each year, full details of all modules for that year will be provided.

For more information please read BA English Literature with Creative Writing in the course catalogue.

Year 1 compulsory modules

Writing Creatively (20 credits) - In this module you will develop your creative writing skills by focusing on a range of elements of the writer’s craft. You will learn to read texts like a writer and, through examining a range of exemplary published texts, you will study elements of the writer’s craft which may include voice, metaphor and characterisation. You will develop your critical skills through workshopping your written pieces with your peers and your tutor. Within the supportive environment of the writing workshop, you will learn to give and receive constructive criticism and, guided by this feedback, you will hone your redrafting and editing skills. By the end of the module, you will begin to see how your work fits within contemporary writing practice.

Writing Matters (20 credits) - Writing and communication skills are vital to most professional careers, but they are especially valuable in the field of English studies. This module explores debates around a canonical literary text, examining theoretical approaches and rhetorical strategies used to write about literature. Students will hone their own writing skills by engaging ethically with the text and the ideas of others, developing structured arguments, expressing ideas clearly and concisely, working with feedback, and practising writing as a process. As a result, students will cultivate a deeper understanding of how writing works, learn how to share insights with greater efficacy and sophistication, and practice how to transfer this knowledge to future workplace contexts.

Reading Between the Lines (20 credits) - This module equips students with a critical vocabulary for sophisticated literary study, introducing the creative, argumentative and exciting discipline of ‘English Studies’. Through close analysis of specific texts across a range of periods and forms, students will encounter some of the varied theories that have shaped and continue to underpin the discipline. Students will find out how an English degree might change the way we read and see the world, while developing their academic skills through guided critical reading, collaboration with peers in group presentations and seminar discussions, and a variety of assignments designed to introduce them to the different formats of assessment required throughout the degree.

Year 1 optional modules (selection of typical options shown below)

Drama: Text and Performance (20 credits)
Modern Fictions in English: Conflict, Liminality, Translation (20 credits)
Poetry: Reading and Interpretation (20 credits)
Race, Writing and Decolonization (20 credits)
Creative Writing Workshop (20 credits)
Writing Science-fiction, Fantasy & Horror (20 credits)

Year 2 compulsory modules

Developing Creative Writing (40 credits) - This module continues to provide you with the regular points of tutorial and teaching support, the learning community, and the ongoing guidance that will help you develop further the new creative writing projects that you produce in an academic environment. Regular small groups with published writers again allow you space and a professional atmosphere in which to consider your own practice of creative writing.

Writing Environments: Literature, Nature, Culture (20 credits) - This module examines what it means to live as human beings on a more-than-human planet. We’ll investigate how literary texts from different times and places have understood the relationship between nature and culture. We’ll address human impacts on the environment in relation to historical phenomena such as colonialism. And we’ll explore the insights that literature can offer at a time of concern about climate change and other environmental issues.

Body Language: Literature and Embodiment (20 credits) - This module explores the relationship between embodiment, language and representation across a range of literary forms, genres, and periods, addressing questions such as: what does it mean to be ‘human’? Can technology change who we are? How do we navigate the relationship between the body and the mind? It examines how critical theorists and creative writers and life writers have treated and imagined this relationship between material bodies and literary representation, in order to better understand both the possibilities and limitations of literary expression.

Year 2 optional modules (selection of typical options shown below)

Style and Authorship (20 credits)
Contemporary Literature (20 credits)
Renaissance Literature (20 credits)
Medieval and Tudor Literature (20 credits)
Modern Literature (20 credits)
Postcolonial Literature (20 credits)
The World Before Us: Literature 1660-1830 (20 credits)
Other Voices: Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Literature (20 credits)
Script Writing (20 credits)
Travel and Journalistic Writing (20 credits)
Power of Language (20 credits)
Theatre, Society and Self (20 credits)
Writing for Children and Young Adults (20 credits)

Year 3 compulsory modules

Creative Writing Project (40 credits) - This module encourages independent, self-directed learning, providing a culmination to the research strand emphasised in other modules. It fosters a wide variety of responses to the challenges it offers students, since any final year project might take one of a number of forms. Most importantly, it promotes academic creativity and the exploration of individual intellectual interests.

Page, Publication and Audience (20 credits) - This module focuses on publishing and presentation to the public through the production and launch of our literary journal Tenter Hook. You will develop an understanding of the relationship between creative writing practices and the creative industries, exploring methods of reaching your audience. You also consider your own creative writing practice in the context of industry processes and professionalisation.

Learning and teaching

We use various teaching and learning methods to help you benefit from our tutors' expertise. Group seminars and workshops are at the heart of this degree.

You'll also encounter:

• Lectures
• Guest masterclasses
• One-to-one tutorials and supervisions
• Group work
• Online learning through Minerva, our Virtual Learning Environment. 

Independent study is a vital element of this course since it enables you to develop your research and critical skills and form your ideas. Our expert academics will teach you on this course, from lecturers to professors. You’ll have access to the unique and internationally important holdings of the Brotherton Library’s Special Collections, to take inspiration from and see first-hand how some of the top writers of this and previous ages went about crafting their writing.

You may also experience teaching led by published writers or professionals from the cultural industries, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus. 

On this course, you’ll be taught by our expert academics, from lecturers through to professors. You may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

Assessment

In your Creative Writing modules, you’ll produce a creative portfolio in various genres, such as life writing, fiction, poetry, short fiction, and travel accounts. 

Some modules will also include wikis, podcasts, research exercises or oral presentations.

Your final year project comprises a long independent creative piece and a critical reflection. English modules are assessed using various methods, including exams, essays and shorter written assignments. 

Entry requirements

A-level: AAA including English (Language, Literature or Language and Literature).

Other course specific tests:

Where an applicant is taking the EPQ in a relevant subject this might be considered alongside other Level 3 qualifications and may attract an alternative offer in addition to the standard offer. If you are taking A Levels, this would be AAB at A Level including A in English (Language, Literature or Language and Literature) and grade A in the EPQ.

Alternative qualification

Read more about UK and Republic of Ireland accepted qualifications or contact the School’s Undergraduate Admissions Team.

Alternative entry

We’re committed to identifying the best possible applicants, regardless of personal circumstances or background.

Access to Leeds is a contextual admissions scheme which accepts applications from individuals who might be from low income households, in the first generation of their immediate family to apply to higher education, or have had their studies disrupted.

Find out more about Access to Leeds and contextual admissions.

Typical Access to Leeds offer: ABB including an A in English (Language, Literature or Language and Literature) at A Level and pass Access to Leeds.

Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

This course is designed for students whose backgrounds mean they are less likely to attend university (also known as widening participation backgrounds) and who do not currently meet admissions criteria for direct entry to a degree.

The course will give you the opportunity to be taught by academic staff and provides intensive support to enable your development of academic skills and knowledge. On successful completion of your foundation year, you will progress to your chosen degree course. Find out more about the Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

International

We accept a range of international equivalent qualifications. For more information contact the School of English admissions team.

International Foundation Year

International students who do not meet the academic requirements for undergraduate study may be able to study the University of Leeds International Foundation Year. This gives you the opportunity to study on campus, be taught by University of Leeds academics and progress onto a wide range of Leeds undergraduate courses. Find out more about International Foundation Year programmes.

English language requirements

IELTS 6.5 overall, with no less than 6.0 in any component. For other English qualifications, read English language equivalent qualifications.

Improve your English
If you're an international student and you don't meet the English language requirements for this programme, you may be able to study our undergraduate pre-sessional English course, to help improve your English language level.

Fees

UK: To be confirmed

International: £26,000 (per year)

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2024/25
Tuition fees for UK full-time undergraduate students are set by the UK Government and will be £9,250 for students starting in 2024/25.

The fee may increase in future years of your course in line with inflation only, as a consequence of future changes in Government legislation and as permitted by law.

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2025/26
Tuition fees for UK full-time undergraduate students starting in 2025/26 have not yet been confirmed by the UK government. When the fee is available we will update individual course pages.

Tuition fees for international undergraduate students starting in 2024/25 and 2025/26
Tuition fees for international students for 2024/25 are available on individual course pages. Fees for students starting in 2025/26 will be available from September 2024.

Tuition fees for a study abroad or work placement year
If you take a study abroad or work placement year, you’ll pay a reduced tuition fee during this period. For more information, see Study abroad and work placement tuition fees and loans.

Read more about paying fees and charges.

There may be additional costs related to your course or programme of study, or related to being a student at the University of Leeds. Read more on our living costs and budgeting page.

Scholarships and financial support

If you have the talent and drive, we want you to be able to study with us, whatever your financial circumstances. There is help for students in the form of loans and non-repayable grants from the University and from the government. Find out more in our Undergraduate funding overview.

Applying

Apply to this course through UCAS. Check the deadline for applications on the UCAS website.

Read our guidance about applying.

International students apply through UCAS in the same way as UK students. Our network of international representatives can help you with your application. If you’re unsure about the application process, contact the admissions team for help.

Read about visas, immigration and other information in International students. We recommend that international students apply as early as possible to ensure that they have time to apply for their visa.

Admissions policy

University of Leeds Admissions Policy 2025

This course is taught by

School of English

Contact us

School of English Undergraduate Admissions

Email: englishug@leeds.ac.uk
Telephone:

Career opportunities

A degree in English with Creative Writing equips you with a range of valuable skills and attributes. Your skills and experience as a flexible and imaginative writer will open up a range of pathways within the creative industries. 

Our graduates have gone on to find success in areas such as the creative industries, marketing, education, journalism, law, publishing, media, business charity work, civil service, management consultancy and leadership. 

Many have also progressed to postgraduate study. 

On this course, you’ll develop your abilities as an excellent communicator who can present well-reasoned arguments and conclusions. 

Learning in groups with others and reading about human problems and social situations will develop your interpersonal skills and understanding of ethical and cultural complexities. 

You’ll have strong creative and verbal skills, and be able to conduct research, interpret complex information, think critically and express yourself clearly. Employers are always looking out for people with these critical skills.

Careers support

We encourage you to prepare for your career from day one. That’s one of the reasons Leeds graduates are so sought after by employers.

Leeds for Life is our unique approach to helping you make the most of University by supporting your academic and personal development. Find out more at the Leeds for Life website.

The Careers Centre and staff in your faculty provide a range of help and advice to help you plan your career and make well-informed decisions along the way, even after you graduate. Find out more about Careers support.

Study abroad and work placements

Study abroad

On this course you have the opportunity to apply to spend time abroad, usually as an extra academic year. We have over 300 University partners worldwide and popular destinations for our students include Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Latin America. 

Find out more at the Study Abroad website.

Work placements

Practical work experience can help you decide on your career and improve your employability. On this course you have the option to apply to take a placement year module with organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK, or overseas.

Find out more about work experience on the Careers website.