You should have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard in a relevant/related subject. 

You might also be considered for some programmes if you aren’t a graduate or your degree is in an unrelated field, but have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level.

International qualifications

We accept a wide range of international qualifications. Find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score of 7.0 with a 7.0 in writing to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for postgraduate-level study.

Find out more about tuition fees.

Find out more about funding opportunities for home/EU applicants, or funding for international applicants. If you're applying for funding, you may be subject to an application deadline.

Scholarships

This programme is eligible for one of the department's fee waivers. Find out more about how to apply.

You apply directly to Goldsmiths using our online application system. 

Before submitting your application you’ll need to have:

• Details of your education history, including the dates of all exams/assessments
• The email address of your referee who we can request a reference from, or alternatively an electronic copy of your academic reference
• A personal statement – this can either be uploaded as a Word Document or PDF, or completed online

          Please see our guidance on writing a postgraduate statement

• If available, an electronic copy of your educational transcript (this is particularly important if you have studied outside of the UK, but isn’t mandatory)
• You must also submit a portfolio of your creative or life writing with your application. Your portfolio should include two or three short stories, 20-30 poems or several extracts from a novel

You'll be able to save your progress at any point and return to your application by logging in using your username/email and password.

When to apply

We accept applications from October for students wanting to start the following September. 

We encourage you to complete your application as early as possible, even if you haven't finished your current programme of study. It's very common to be offered a place that is conditional on you achieving a particular qualification. 

Late applications will only be considered if there are spaces available.

If you're applying for funding, you may be subject to an earlier application deadline. 

Selection process

Admission to many programmes is by interview, unless you live outside the UK. Occasionally, we'll make candidates an offer of a place on the basis of their application and qualifications alone.

Find out more about applying.

Staff who contribute to the programme include:

Maura Dooley – Poet and Programme Co-ordinator for the MA

Maura has published six collections of poetry, including ‘Kissing a Bone’, and recently ‘Life Under Water’ (2008) both of which were shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Maura is also an anthologist, has worked as a script consultant and been involved in numerous initiatives to enhance the profile of poetry in the United Kingdom.

Stephen Knight – poet, novelist and theatre director

His poetry publications include ‘Flowering Limbs’, ‘The Sandfields Baudelaire’, ‘Dream City Cinema’, and, for children, ‘Sardines and Other Poems’. He has published the novel, ‘Mr Schnitzel’ in 2000, and an anthology, ‘I Am Twenty People’, edited with Mimi Khalvati. His fiction and poetry reviews have appeared in the ‘Times Literary Supplement’ and the ‘Independent on Sunday’.

Francis Spufford – novelist and anthologist

Francis produced an anthology of literature about the poles, ‘The Ends of the Earth’ (with Elizabeth Kolbert), and he is the author of ‘The Child That Books Built’, ‘The Backroom Boys’ and ‘Red Plenty’.

Ardashir Vakil – novelist and short story writer

His first novel, ‘Beach Boy’, won a Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and has been translated into 10 languages. His second novel, ‘One Day’, was shortlisted for the Encore Award.

Associate Tutors include:

• Romesh Gunesekera
• Pamela Johnson
• Eva Salzman
• Nick Drake

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Find out more about staff in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.

 

You can explore the work of students currently enrolled on the programme in the Goldfish online journal. Other examples include:

Automatons
Derek Adams

Breton and Soupault, 1930

André writes, he does not stop,
words bubble from the depths, his pen
erupts with images he can’t contain:
awake two days, two nights, the clock
no longer signifies a thing
its tic tic rhythm - crazy jazz -
synchronises a second hand with his.

Philippe’s eyes wide, his synapse sing
of chess pieces De Sade has bound,
surprising beasts and magnetic waves,
whose shapes appear and go to ground.
The pen nib screeches on the page,
thoughts run before its baying hounds:
words drop exhausted where they may.

---

 

Arpeggios
Elly Parsons

I

Driving Music

The radio survived the blow
but stuck, like spinning wheels in snow,
on Lennon’s eternal tone, so
this is Christmas / what have you done?

II

Domestic

As I hear the laugh of another girl
enter my silent kingdom,
I stand my ground, iron your pants
and imagine you’re in them.

III

Family Treasure

My Grandfather is writing a directory
of Corporation Rubbish Tips.
When he dies, which he will,
I hope I don’t inherit it.

Careers

Graduates of this programme include Tom Lee, Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin, Amy Sackville, Rohan Kriwaczek, Evie Wyld, Sara Grant, Naomi Foyle, Bronia Kita, Lijia Zhang, Ashley Dartnell and Suzanne Joinson and the poets Emily Berry, Andy Spragg, Kate Potts, Jack Underwood, Abigail Parry, Anthony Joseph, Katrina Naomi and Matthew Gregory.

Among them they've won or been shortlisted for awards including The Sunday Times/EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2012, the Rooney Prize for Literature 2011, the 2008 and 2011 Dylan Thomas Prize, several Eric Gregory Awards, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2009, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2009 and 2010, the Guardian First Book Award, the New Writing Ventures Prize, and several Betty Trask Awards.

Other graduates have gone on to work in publishing (for example, as senior commissioning editors), journalism, public relations, teaching, advertising, the civil service, business, industry, and the media.

Skills

The MA will enable you to develop transferable skills, including: enhanced communication and discussion skills in written and oral contexts; the ability to analyse and evaluate different textual materials; the ability to organise information, and to assimilate and evaluate competing arguments.

Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths. 

Bronia Kita

Bronia is currently working on her third novel, despite not yet having finished the second, in the hope of fooling the ‘difficult second novel’ jinx.

Bronia Kita completed her MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths in 2006. Her first novel, The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum, was published in 2009, and she is currently working on her third, despite not yet having finished the second, in the hope of fooling the ‘difficult second novel’ jinx.

She also writes stories, one of which – ‘White Chrysanthemums’ – was published in Brought to Book, an anthology of Ian St James Award winners. She teaches creative writing to children of primary school age.

Amy Sackville

Amy's first novel was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best work of literature by a writer under 35. 

Amy Sackville studied at Leeds and Oxford before taking an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths in 2008.

Her first novel, The Still Point, was published in January 2010 by Portobello Books. It was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for a work of literature by a writer under 35, and was also long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, Orkney, was published by Granta Books in spring 2013.

Blake Morrison

“It’s a thrill seeing young writers I’ve worked with at Goldsmiths have their books accepted.”

Blake Morrison is best known for his autobiographical works ‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’ and ‘Things My Mother Never Told Me’, which redefined the memoir form. He has also written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, and has adapted plays for the stage. Blake has been a Professor at Goldsmiths since 2003 and is the director of the Goldsmiths Writers’ Centre.

You’ve been at Goldsmiths for ten years this year. What is about the place that has kept you here?

“Yes, it will be 10 years in October, but my relationship with Goldsmiths goes right back, to when I ran a poetry workshop at the College in my mid-twenties. I like the energy of the place, the iconoclasm, the willingness to take risks and try new things.”

You live in South London and some of your writing is based here. What is about this area that inspires you?

“I come from the North (Yorkshire) but settled south of the river (Blackheath). It took me a while to write directly about South London; the landscapes in my head were all Pennine landscapes. But you can’t live in a place for long and avoid writing about it, and the river especially has begun to flow into my poems and novels – the Thames barrier and the Millennium Dome have already featured, and the Shard will be there in my next book.”

Is there any advice that you give in your teaching that you wish you’d taken yourself?

“Have confidence. Go for it. And keep going. I spent 15 years doing a full-time job as a books editor, writing only in spare moments, on the side. I wish I’d put my own writing at the centre of things a little earlier.”

How has your writing changed over the years? In what way has being at Goldsmiths shaped this?

“Teaching writing to others inevitably makes you more aware of what you’re up to in your own work. That isn’t necessarily a good thing – self-consciousness can be a curse – but at best you work harder to correct your faults, to ‘fail better’ as Samuel Beckett put it. I’ve certainly learned things from students I’ve worked with and I’m grateful for that.”

When you were younger did you ever expect to be a published writer, and do you still get a kick from seeing your name in print? 

“I grew up in a middle-class family but it wasn’t a literary family and the idea of being a published writer seemed remote. So yes, it was a thrill to get my first poems published. That thrill hasn’t altogether gone away, to get a finished copy of a new book is always a big moment, but the bigger thrill these days is seeing young writers I’ve worked with at Goldsmiths have their books accepted.”

See more profiles for this programme