Our English and Creative Writing courses will grow your writing through work with established writers, industry professionals, teaching specialists and your peers, whilst you experience this most literary of all cities.
Creative Writing
Our graduates’ recent achievements mean that agents and publishers really listen when they hear you’re with us. Among many other stand-out successes, in 2018 Anne Youngson's Meet Me at the Museum has met with international success, and Linni Ingemundsen launched the first novel of her two-book deal with Usborne’s young adult list. In 2016 Kit de Waal (pictured with Philip Pullman at our 2013 showcase) published My Name is Leon, which was immediately taken up for adaptation by BBC radio, TV and film; and in 2015 Catherine Chanter’s The Well appeared to international acclaim and was chosen by the Richard & Judy/WH Smith Book Club.
All Major Projects gaining a Distinction are looked at by top agents Felicity Bryan Associates (who visit us each year), with a view to representation, and by legendary London publisher Philip Gwyn Jones, who has commissioned some of the biggest names in fiction. People like this are the gatekeepers of literary success; our aim is to get them to open those gates for you.
Our Creative Writing Fellows lead on average a major workshop session every other week of each semester as well as other shorter sessions.
Patience Agbabi
Patience Agbabi – poet and author of Telling Tales and The Infinite.
Sally Bayley
Sally Bayley – fiction and nonfiction author, most recently Girl With Dove and No Boys Play Here.
Steven Hall
Steven Hall – was included as one of Granta Magazine’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ in 2013.
Philip Gwyn Jones
Philip Gwyn Jones – was the first UK publisher to have offered contracts to Naomi Klein, Patrick Ness, Arundhati Roy, Lionel Shriver, Zadie Smith and David Foster Wallace, among many others.
Simon Mason
Simon Mason – author of Moon Pie (Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - shortlisted) and YA series Garvie Smith, and leading children's fiction editor.
Dr Morag Joss
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing
Morag Joss is the Subject Coordinator for Creative Writing at Brookes. She is the award-winning author of the three Sara Selkirk novels, Half Broken Things, Puccini’s Ghosts, The Night Following, Among the Missing (Across the Bridge) and Our Picnics in the Sun. Her work has been translated into several languages and her fourth novel, Half Broken Things, was adapted as a film for ITV, starring Penelope Wilton and Daniel Mays. She has also written for television, and writes short stories for print and broadcast. Her prizes and shortlistings include the CWA Silver Dagger, the USA Edgar Award for best novel, and residencies at the Heinrich Böll house on Achill, Ireland, and at Casa Ecco, Como, Italy. Her recent work includes new libretti for operas by Donizetti and Offenbach. Prior to joining Brookes, she held Fellowships at the universities of Reading and Southampton, and taught Creative Writing at Oxford University. She has also been a tutor for the Arvon Foundation and for the National Writers Centre of Scotland, Moniack Mhor.