If you have a passion for non-fiction and are interested in developing your writing in a supportive and engaging multimedia environment, this online course is ideal.
Creative Non-Fiction has emerged as a leading area of contemporary publishing, journalism, and general media interest. Throughout this MA course, you’ll focus on key genres such as memoir, autobiography, nature and travel writing across a range of media, enabling you to develop your own writing in response to key and cutting-edge examples from the field. Our relationship with Hachette UK, one of the world’s leading publishers of nonfiction, opens up a range of opportunities for professional engagement for our students.
Middlesex offers the only course in the UK with full-time distance learning focusing on non-fiction.
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Throughout this course you’ll cover memoir, biography, travel writing as well as non-fiction publications that raise awareness of national and international issues. You’ll enjoy huge readership popularity and generally secure larger advances from publishers than fiction. Aspiring writers are becoming increasingly aware of this and many hope to establish themselves as writers of mainstream non-fiction.
The programme provides a platform for aspiring writers to find their voice and tell their story. It is flexible so that it fits around other commitments, and may be taken from anywhere in the world, over a one-year or two-year period.
The programme will aim to:
Equips you with a critical understanding of defining works of Creative Non-Fiction within a range of specific genres. It allows you to develop your own synopsis and sample chapter(s) of written Creative Non-Fiction. The synopsis and sample chapter(s) can then be offered to agents and publishers on completion of the MA.
The module aims to equip you with a theoretical, technical and critical understanding of a range of approaches, techniques and devices used for effective story-telling within diverse, genre-defining and market-leading examples of creative non-fiction. This module will give you the opportunity to ‘pitch’ your own writing ambitions and projects.
This module enables you to research elements of your stories, as well as investigating the reasons why research is necessary. This will allow you to formulate and present a specific research question to support your own creative project. You will contextualise this through developing a deeper understanding of the publishing industry.
Multimodal Storytelling employs various technologies to tell stories differently and reach a more diverse audience. Audio-visual media provides an array of narrative tools which augment, expand, capture and reproduce the actual, physical world around us, and enable us to both document and contextualise our lived experience.
In this final, individually supervised module you will create an independent writing project that will benefit your development as a writer. You will initiate, plan and execute a writing project at a professional level, and produce and edit a high quality sustained original narrative with accompanying critical commentary that targets an identified market.
This course is an online distance learning programme, so all teaching and learning is done online.
The MA in Creative Non-Fiction seeks to develop a supportive virtual community, a safe space providing a student-centred approach to sharing work, ideas in progress, and the giving, receiving, and implementing of peer and tutor feedback.
Peer-to-peer feedback is guided and facilitated through asynchronous, text-based discussion forums. The core elements of the programme are enhanced with regular live Zoom sessions and peer and tutor video presentations.
Learning is assessed 100% by coursework. Attainment of the course objectives is evidenced through supported, independent planning and writing of creative non-fiction. Your knowledge and understanding will be assessed by a range of creative, reflective and critical writing; portfolios of peer feedback and video presentations.
The outward, industry-facing aspect of the MA Creative Non-Fiction will be enhanced both through the Creative Writing HQ website and the annual North London Story Festival. There will be opportunities for you to get involved in the non-fiction strand of the Middlesex North London Storyfest and exciting opportunities for collaboration, placements and engagement with our new partnership with the Non-Fiction department at Hachette UK.
This MA prepares you to go onto a wide array of careers, our MA graduates have gone on to work in:
Of recent graduates, one has had her novel accepted for publication (Moist Press) and another has major agency representation for a memoir. Two graduates of our partner MA Novel Writing programme have been accepted onto the Faber Work-in-Progress Academy, another has been published in translation by prestigious Italian publisher Gallucci Editore, and several are successfully self-publishing across various platforms.
Progression from the MA to PhD is another area of potential progression, and we currently have several MA students pursuing PhD’s.
Dr Ariel Kahn has published a highly regarded novel, Raising Sparks, which was shortlisted for the Not the Booker Prize. He has published widely on Non-fiction Visual Narratives and Autobiographies in a range of academic journals.
Dr Adam Dalton has published twelve novels, in a range of genres, and has written academically on both creative writing and genre. He has particular specialisms in both literary theory and language analysis.
Vesna Lukic is a Lecturer in Documentary Film making, with a range of successful projects and productions behind her.
