King's is home to award-winning novelists, poets, essayists, biographers, non-fiction authors, and literary critics, who teach undergraduate modules and supervise doctoral projects.
For undergraduates, our English with Creative Writing BA allows students to blend their passions of reading and writing into a diverse degree programme. Students on the English BA can also take introductory and advanced courses n poetry, prose fiction, and creative non-fiction.
At postgraduate level, we run an innovative, practice-led PhD in Creative Writing Research programme, designed for talented and committed writers in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction who wish to complete a book-length project for publication and prepare for a long-term career in the literary world.
King's has a long literary history – members of our alumni community include acclaimed contemporary authors such as Michael Morpurgo, Alain de Botton, Hanif Kureishi, Marina Lewycka, Susan Hill, Lawrence Norfolk, Ross Raisin, Alexander Masters, Maureen Duffy, Anita Brookner, and Helen Cresswell. Yet the University has also been home to major figures in literature, such as Thomas Hardy, Arthur C Clarke, Christopher Isherwood, BS Johnson, John Keats, W. Somerset Maugham, and Virginia Woolf.
Creative Writing staff
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Reader in English and Creative Writing
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Professor of Modern Literature and Culture
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Reader in Creative and Critical Writing
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Lecturer in Creative Writing
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Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing
Works by our staff have won or been shortlisted for a number of literary accolades, including: the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year, the Costa First Novel Award, the Costa Poetry Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Biographers’ Club / Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize, the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award, the European Union Prize for Literature, the RSL Encore Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Letters, le Prix du Roman Fnac, le Prix du Roman Etranger, and the Kiriyama Prize. Many of the creative writing staff are Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature.