Program Overview

---

MA Writing for Young People (Online)

Overview

A specialist creative writing MA aimed at writers for children and young adults, taught by published authors.

Our staff

• Alexia Casale
• Louisa Reid
• Lucy Cuthew
• Mel Darbon
• Alex Campbell
• Annalie Grainger
• CJ Skuse
• Sam Beckbessinger
• Dashe Roberts
• Gina Blaxill
• Rachel Hamilton
• Karen Gregory

What you'll learn

• The Context module explores the main categories of books published for children and young people, with a focus on reading as a writer and on understanding your audience at the different stages of childhood and adolescence.
• The Writing Workshop module is an opportunity to explore various aspects of the craft of writing for children and young people.
• The Manuscript module involves working on a one-on-one basis with a tutor to develop, draft, edit and revise your major project – part of a full-length novel, or a collection of pieces.

Course structure

This distance learning course is taught part-time over two years.

Year one

• The Context module explores the main categories of books published for children and young people.
• The Writing Workshop module is an opportunity to explore various aspects of the craft of writing for children and young people.
• The Manuscript module involves working on a one-on-one basis with a tutor to develop, draft, edit and revise your major project.

Year two

• The second Writing Workshop module enables you to continue to experiment and to develop your skills as a writer, and to start to focus more on your final manuscript project.
• The second Context module considers the realities of the children’s publishing industry, publishing as a business and the practicalities involved in turning a manuscript into a book.

Course modules

• Writing Workshop Autumn: Writing for Young People
• Context Module One: Writing for Young People: Forms, Ages and Stages
• Writing Workshop Spring: Writing for Young People
• Writing for Young People: Contemporary Children’s Publishing
• The Manuscript (double module)

How will I be assessed?

You'll be assessed through a range of tasks, including creative portfolios, samples of work-in-progress, reflective commentaries, a selection of publishing-focused pieces, and your manuscript submissions.

How will I be taught?

• Writing Workshop and Context Modules: You'll be taught through a mix of online lectures/workshops, and one-to-one tutorials.
• The Manuscript Module: All students will focus on the Manuscript Module from June to September. The manuscript is taught via one-to-one tutorials, working with a tutor who is a published author with particular knowledge of your field of work, or who can bring complementary expertise to bear on it.

What’s the time commitment in a usual week?

Our teaching weeks run October-January and February-May, with June-September comprised of one-to-one tutorials on a schedule negotiated by the tutor and student.

Opportunities

• Work placements, industry links and internships: This course has an excellent reputation across children’s and young adult publishing, with name recognition among agents, editors and booksellers.
• Careers and publications: Over 70 of our alumni have now been traditionally published. Our graduates may go into editing (freelance and at a publishing house), agenting, rights, marketing, publicity, sales, events management and teaching.
• Competitions and awards: Opportunities for new writing appear all the time, and we'll encourage you to participate in these at the stage that is right for you.
• Guest lectures and resources: We offer a programme of online evening lectures from a variety of guest authors and industry professionals.

Fees

2025 entry

• UK part time: £4,733*
• International part time: £9,220*

Additional course costs

You may need to pay additional course costs over and above your tuition fees, for example, for specialist equipment or trips and visits.

Funding opportunities

Please visit our Funding pages for an overview of the funding options that may be available, including scholarships and bursaries.

Entry requirements

We offer places on the basis of our assessment of your quality, potential and commitment as a writer and your ability to benefit from the course.

• Usually, but not invariably, you'll have a degree. This may be in subjects other than Creative Writing.
• This is not a beginner’s course, so we'll be looking for evidence of originality in your writing for young people, and a sense of audience.
• You'll have read widely in the field of contemporary children’s literature.

How do I apply?

Ready to apply? Click the 'apply now' button in the centre of this page.

Interview and portfolio guidance

We review all applications and try to provide a small amount of feedback even if your application is not successful. Our most common feedback to applicants is:

• A recommendation to join a writing group and gain experience of showing strangers your work and receiving feedback
• To spend more time reading recently published children’s and Young Adult literature.

Interviews take the form of an informal 20-minute conversation with two members of the MA Writing for Young People team.

Guidance for international students

We assess international students on the same basis as domestic students. We welcome the richness of experience that having students from many countries and backgrounds brings to the course.

Get ahead

It's a good idea to sign up to the free newsletters of the major trade publications in the UK, USA and any other country of particular interest to you. Keep tabs on the bestseller lists and include some works from these lists in your reading while ensuring you’re also reading as diversely as possible across genres and age groups.

Explore resources on the craft of writing (for example, Will Storr’s Science of Storytelling, John Yorke’s Into the Woods, Robert McKee’s , or Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat). Become familiar with the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, including the annually-updated essays (there's also a good free blog).

Join a writing group; provide feedback to others and show them your work, then edit it with the feedback you receive. This is the best possible preparation for the workshopping that lies at the heart of our course.

Want to apply for this year?

Many of our postgraduate courses have a limited number of student spaces. To avoid the disappointment of the course being full, we recommend that you apply as early as possible, ideally by March of the year you'd like to start your studies.

Late applications (generally those made after 31 July) will only be considered if places remain on the course.

Contact us

Admissions:

• +44 (0)

Course leader: Dr Alexia Casale
Email:

Related courses

• Writing for Young People (campus based)
• Creative Writing
• Scriptwriting
• Nature and Travel Writing