Find your voice with English and creative writing

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body" – Joseph Addison 'The Tatler', 1709
Find your voice with English and creative writing
With English and creative writing you have the opportunity to choose a range of courses which will feed your interest in literature, challenge you to sharpen your critical and analytical skills and allow you to choose to study and practise creative writing. We encourage you to interpret not only the texts you'll read but also the world around you in more subtle and penetrating ways. 

You will have opportunities to engage with literature and the arts beyond the curriculum: English students, for example, edit, design and contribute to the University creative writing magazine, INK. 

As a Plymouth student you can participate in an exciting programme of public lectures by notable authors in the The Arts Institute literature series and with the Plymouth Theatre Royal close at hand, students also have the opportunity to attend a wide range of theatrical events and performance poetry.

Applications for 2020 entry

As a result of COVID-19, the English and Creative Writing team want to assure all applicants that we will be commencing our teaching with the new academic year of September 2020. We’ll be heeding government advice, but please know our programmes will be running this autumn, be it as traditional in-class delivery, a blend of this with some online teaching, or, if need be, fully online options. Ensuring the delivery of a quality education and a rich student experience is paramount, and we look forward to welcoming you.

Undergraduate courses

You can join one of our single honours courses, or take the opportunity to combine English as your major subject with Spanish, French or History.

INK journal

Published by the University of Plymouth Press, and supported by English and creative writing staff, INK is entirely edited and produced by our students.

The process of producing INK is as important as the end product. It’s the chance for you to publish your creative work in a literary magazine.

Discover INK

Creative writing commission: Recovery


"Recovery is feeling at home in the peace
                                        and acknowledging the chaos"

At the start of the summer of 2020, as the UK began to emerge from lockdown, we set our English and Creative Writing students a writing brief to look to the future and produce work on the theme of ‘Recovery’.

Read more about the commission and listen to the participants read their work.

Plymouth Writer’s Group international short story competition

A group of our current third year English students have been given a fantastic opportunity to act as a judging panel for the Plymouth Writers’ Group international short story competition.

Plymouth Writers Group (PWG) are a local community group with some 20 members, including staff and former students, at the University of Plymouth. Four years ago PWG approached the English and Creative Writing Department, and offered a collaboration in respect of their intention to run a Short Story Competition.

Find out more about the competition

Read more from our English and creative writing lecturers

English and creative writing research

The research interests of the English and creative writing department at Plymouth range from the early modern period to the present and cover a diverse set of approaches and priorities based primarily in imagination, judgement and representation. 

We are particularly interested in developing interdisciplinary projects across a range of themes and topics, including: the transnational and the transatlantic, environmental literatures, poetry and poetics, and scientific discourses. 

Through our world-leading and internationally recognised research, we are making significant interventions in local, national and international cultural and creative industries.

Professor Angela K Smith

Professor of Modern Literature, Angela talks about her research and publications relating to women’s writing and experience of the first world war, women’s suffrage and war and memory

Meet the team