M.Phil. Creative Writing

Program Overview

Course Description

This course, the first Masters course in creative writing at an Irish university, was offered by the School of English for the first time in 1997–98. It is based in the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, 21 Westland Row, the birthplace of Oscar Wilde. Its faculty includes some of Ireland’s leading contemporary writers, including Eoin McNamee, Deirdre Madden and Kevin Power, Harry Clifton and Carlo Gébler. Each year the Centre also plays host to visiting Writer Fellows, who in recent years have included Claire Keegan and Colette Bryce. Distinguished alumni of the programme include Chris Binchy and Sean O’Reilly. Nicole Flattery and Lisa Harding have emerged as exciting new talents in the past few years.

The M.Phil. in Creative Writing is designed as a one-year, full-time course intended for students who are seriously committed to writing, are practising, or are prospective authors, and who wish to develop their writing within the framework of a university course and in the context of an Irish literary milieu. It involves the close and critical examination of the student’s work in group workshops and under guided personal tuition, with the study also of the professional techniques of book editing and publishing, and the opportunity to explore the cultural and literary contexts of writing in Ireland.

Students are required to take workshops, attend courses of lectures, and take one specialist writing workshop, while continuing to develop their own individual work throughout the year. At Trinity you will also join a diverse, supportive and dynamic community of students, scholars, and writers in a world-leading English department right at the heart of one of the world’s great literary cities. You will also have access to the outstanding library and archival collections of our world-famous copyright library.