Bachelor of Arts (English and Creative Writing)

Course Overview

This new course builds and expands on over a decade’s worth of experience in directing and fostering undergraduate talent specifically in Creative Writing at NUI Galway. It provides a unique opportunity for students with an aptitude and passion for literary expression, and in keeping with the principle that ‘writers learn to write by writing’, the emphasis throughout is on practice-based learning and experience.

You will study and practice all the major genres of Creative Writing: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Playwriting, Screenwriting. Within these broader genres, you will be helped discover, experiment with and strengthen your own individual strands of interest.

During the course, your developing concentration on your own creative practice is paralleled by a focus on the practical imperatives and industry requirements in the many established and emerging writing-related fields. From the very start during your first year, a speaker from the writing professions visits the class each week for discussions, Q & A and informal conversation. This will help you begin to actively engage with the everyday routines and rhythms of writing-related professionals of all kinds.

With your expanding knowledge of what it takes to write at a high level, by the end of second year you will be ready to embark on a third year that provides for a 100% focus on your personal Creative Writing project(s. By the end of this specialism year, students on the course have developed advanced drafts of, for instance, novels of various kinds, collections of stories and/or flash fiction, poetry collections, plays, screenplays, essay collections, podcast scripts. You decide on your creative direction and project focus for the year, and then we will engage with your ideas and provide the teaching, mentorship and all-in guidance to help you fulfil your vision for your work.

Then, as you complete your studies in English and one other subject during your fourth and final year, you will build further on your third-year project(s through modules that concentrate on further professionalisation, publication planning, social and public platforms and the various ways now of getting yourself and your writing out there.

Minimum Grade H5 in two subjects and passes in four other subjects at O6/H7 Grades in the Leaving Certificate including Irish, English, another language, and three other subjects recognised for entry purposes.

With a comparatively high proportion of our students attaining first-class honours degrees (typically 30-40% of the class), this course will help open doors of employment for you in all those fields where written communication is important. You will have fostered the talent, imagination and professionalism necessary to be a published author and you may consider a career as one.

The skills you will acquire are applicable to a wide range of careers and creative fields, for example in teaching, editing, publishing and other literary professions, advertising and copy-writing, games writing and narrative design, and the existing and ever-expanding areas in media, journalism and public engagement.