Creative Writing at Royal Holloway began in 2004 offering an MA and then in 2007 launched one of the earliest Undergraduate Creative Writing programmes in the UK.  We now offer Creative Writing and Drama and American Literature and Creative Writing.  We have expanded our options to include popular courses on Screen Writing as well as cutting edge experimental art writing between the visual and verbal forms.

Prize winning novelist Ben Markovits explains why he thinks we came top in the UK: “Most of the teaching at Royal Holloway is done in small groups, which means you get to know each other and your professors well by the end of the three years. It’s easy to get lost on a big course. That doesn’t happen here. But we’re also big enough that you get to hear a variety of different voices and styles on your way to the degree.   If I were a student today, these are the two main things I’d want from an English degree: how to read a sentence so that you know what it means; and how to write one so that it says what you want. This is the core of what the Creative Writing program at Royal Holloway allows you to focus on – in workshops and seminars, and in different forms and genres.”  

Dell Olsen, a poet and also Director of the undergraduate programmes says “they all comprise exciting and innovative courses which allow students to combine critical and creative approaches to writing across a range of forms and genres. Our students have access to the teaching expertise of both creative and academic writers who encourage and challenge them to write and think differently. The campus at Royal Holloway is a calm environment in which students can develop their writing while also providing easy access to cultural events of central London.”

Find out more about our BA English and Creative Writing course online here.