Creative Writing and English Literature (Professional Placement Year)

Develop professional skills and follow your passion for literature and writing with an exciting combination of creative practice and critical thinking, led by expert researchers and award-winning authors.

• Engage with the world beyond university. Work with communities, international institutions, literary festivals, publishing houses and cultural projects.

• Your projects, your way, with our support. From creating digital projects, to essays, publications and podcasts - we’ll help you find your voice.

• Explore literature through a global perspective, embracing it as a diverse phenomenon and challenging its complex histories.

Combining Creative Writing and English has a number of benefits. Your Creative Writing modules will give you a space to explore your imagination and translate your ideas into poetry, script and prose, as well as graphic novels and comics, or live literature – events, festivals, readings and performances connected with your craft.

English Literature introduces you to an incredible range of literary worlds. From classic texts to new and unfamiliar writing, you'll be asked to think differently about what ‘literature’ can be and to explore original ways of reading and analysing it. We’ll ask you to place your reading in wider contexts, and to draw on other disciplines to deepen your understanding and sharpen your insights.

It’s not just about reading and writing – you’ll also learn vital professional skills. English Literature and Creative Writing will help you develop the creativity, analysis, communication and collaboration skills, which can open up a diverse range of possible careers. To maximise your potential, we’ll support you in learning how to manage projects, work with your peers, and collaborate in our partnership projects.

During your degree, you’ll encounter people working in a range of organisations in the creative and cultural industries, such as publishing houses, literary agencies, charities, museums and heritage sites, advertising and marketing agencies. You’ll leave with a portfolio of work and experience that demonstrates the practical and professional skills, habits and ways of thinking that you’ve learned – which are highly valued by employers.

Why choose this combination?
Being a better reader helps you to become a better writer, and vice versa. Writers studying English benefit from critical engagement with a wide range of literature, and studying literature helps you understand your own creative practice within the wider literary culture. In parallel, your creative writing skills, as they develop, enable you to recognise elements of style and authorial craft in literature. This combination of critical skills, knowledge and practice will give you the tools to understand the world and seek to shape it.

Combined Honour Awards
At Bath Spa University many of our undergraduate programmes can be combined, so you don’t have to limit yourself to one subject. If you choose to study a combined award then in Year One you’ll start by studying both subjects in equal depth. From Year Two you can choose whether to continue with equal numbers of modules from each subject, or whether you want to select additional modules in one or the other. Upon successful completion of the programme you will graduate with a joint degree.

More about the Professional Placement Year
A Professional Placement Year (PPY), traditionally known as a sandwich year, is where you undertake a period of work with an external organisation for between 9-13 months. The placement occurs between your second and final years of undergraduate study. You can engage in multiple placements to make up the total time and are required to source the placement(s) yourself, with support from the Careers team.

Assessment is based on 100% coursework (there are no exams). Most modules will require you to submit a portfolio of creative writing along with a reflective or contextual essay in which you describe what you've learned in class and from your reading/working on your own writing.

Depending on your module choices, coursework may include essays, journals, portfolios of short critical pieces, projects and dissertations, podcasts, seminar presentations, and web-based projects.