Good creative writing is about writing itself—not following rigid templates or academic constraints, but embracing the artistic process.

Congratulations to our seven students and alumni who read their work in progress at our autumn reading last night.

During the Easter 2025 holidays, we’re hosting five one-day creative writing masterclasses to support your writing practice.

Join us on Thursday 28th November at 7pm at Kemptown Bookshop, Brighton to hear work from our students and alumni and to socialise with other writers on the courses.

Are you interested in becoming a writer? Our brilliant tutors have put together a list of their go-to books about writing.

Congratulations to alumna Sue Paterson whose debut novel The Department of Certainty has been published by indie publisher Stairwell Books. Here she talks about her writing life.

Congratulations to alumna Rosalind Eyben whose biography of her father has recently been published by Taylor & Francis.

Congratulations to alumnus Stuart Gillespie who has secured a publishing deal for his hybrid memoir Food Fight.

Roy Mcfarlane FRSL is a poet, playwright and former youth and community worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage spending most of his years living in Wolverhampton and the Black Country, now residing in Brighton. He has published numerous poetry collections and teaches the Advanced Poetry course on Wednesday afternoons. 

You want to be a writer – but should you take a creative writing course or learn ‘on the job’?

Bethan Roberts is the author of five novels including My Policeman and the story of a 1950s policeman. She has been a tutor on the Creative Writing Programme for four years. Here she talks about her writing life.

Katy Massey writes fiction, scripts and memoir and teaches on the two-year Life Writing Programme.

Sue Orton finished the Life Writing Programme in 2022 and has since self-published her memoir Gathering Threads, which she started during the course. Here she talks about her writing journey.

Congratulations to course alumna Jane Crittenden whose second novel SUMMER EVER AFTER is published by Lake Union today!

Sophie Anderson took the Creative Writing Programme from 2016 to 2018. She has since had two novels – The Butterfly Garden and The Sapphire Cove – published and is currently out on submission with her third.

Sharlene Teo is running a two-day course in June on Writing Otherness – how to write different perspectives from our own. Here she talks about her debut novel, her work as a creative writing lecturer and the importance of confronting our biases, privileges and stereotyped perceptions when writing fiction.

Louise Kenward’s anthology Moving Mountains: Writing Nature Through Illness and Disability was published last autumn. Here she talks about how taking the Creative Writing Programme from 2015-17 helped to kickstart her writing dream and offers some advice on writing while living with pain and fatigue.

Longstanding CWP tutor Hannah Vincent has had a short story broadcast on Radio 4. The story, entitled Stew Woman, is part of the broadcaster’s Short Works series. 

The start of the year is always a time for new year’s resolutions, and setting (or resetting) a regular writing habit is likely to be near the top of the list for many of us writers and poets.

Here poet and CWP tutor John McCullough offers his top writing tips to keep you maintaining your writing practice through the festive season. They’re relevant to both poets and prose writers.