Handbook

This specialisation is for students commencing from 2023.

The Creative Writing major at UNSW is designed to provide you with a practical knowledge of the craft of writing grounded in the study of literature. The interdisciplinary environment at UNSW will also help you forge links with other areas of creative production such as screen writing, media and performing arts.

Through workshop-based core courses at each level of the major, you will learn how to generate, draft, revise and edit your own writing, and to locate that writing in the context of both literary history and current literary trends. You will be exposed to new experimental techniques of writing and given the opportunity to reflect on how you want to contribute to literary culture. At the same time you will hone your critical and analytical skills to enable you to appraise and assess both your own work and the work of other writers.

Prescribed electives at each level are offered to complement your writing with a more formal knowledge of literary genres and movements. The major challenges you to integrate a rigorous critical competency in areas such as poetics and narrative theory into the aesthetic choices you make as a writer. It also challenges you to consider the broader cultural and political implications of those choices and to imagine how you can engage with critical ideas and social debate through and in your own writing. Electives in other disciplines offer the opportunity to extend your writing skills in other media forms and establish formal connections with majors in film studies, media studies, and theatre and performance studies.