Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Coming to America - Sam Kelly at AWP 2012

MA Creative Writing programme leader Sam Kelly is going to America next week for the 2012 AWP  conference. She will be representing our course and Edinburgh Napier University at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' annual gathering, which this year is being held in Chicago.

Sam will be in the windy city from Wednesday February 28th until Sunday March 4th talking about our innovative MA in Creative Writing, its unique focus on genre fiction, and discussing how we've replaced the traditional workshop with a new and innovative approach to teaching.

Anyone attending the conference who wants to discover more about our acclaimed MA programme can email Sam now - s.kelly@napier.ac.uk - to arrange a chat while she's in Chicago. Find out why The Times newspaper in London called our course "a radical departure" in creative writing.

News about our course is spreading worldwide. In three years we've attracted students from the United States, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Italy and Finland. Edinburgh Napier is taking applications for the 2012/13 academic year, and we've already offered places to four US students.

If you're not going to be at AWP in Chicago, you can find out more about our course by checking the links on the right hand side of this blog. If you want to apply, click either full-time or part-time, depending on which version of the course will best suit your needs as a student.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Prize-winning writers & editors visit Genre Fiction class

Genre fiction gets ignored or sneered at by most Creative Writing MAs - not Edinburgh Napier. Our course puts genre fiction at the heart of our teaching. In fact, there's an entire module devoted to it.

To make sure our students are up to date with latest developments in this field, we have guest speakers who specialise in writing, publishing and editing genre fiction.

Last week's class welcomed crime writer, agent and publisher Allan Guthrie, who won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year in 2007. This week we have Lee Harris, editor for the much-acclaimed Angry Robot Books line coming to talk science fiction and fantasy.

Next week anthology editor and Dead By Dawn film festival boss Adele Hartley is coming to talk horror with our students, completing our set of four major genres.

If genre fiction isn't your thing, we also offer specialist modules in writing for graphic novels, creative non-fiction and screenwriting. But poetry is not an option.

Edinburgh Napier student one of 12 shortlisted for Mslexia Women's Novel Competition

One of our current students has been shortlisted for the Mslexia 2011 Women's Novel Competition. Catherine Simpson is among a dozen writers in the running for a first prize of £5000, with the winner announced soon.

The competition was open to unpublished female novelists writing fiction in any genre for adults or young adults. The judging panel features Booker-nominated novelist Sarah Waters, literary agent Clare Alexander, and broadcaster Jenni Murray.

It's believed more than 1000 novels were entered, so reaching the top 12 is well worth celebrating. Getting shortlisted is another success for Catherine.

Her short story Mercy Boo Coo was among the winners of Family Legends, a competition run by BBC Radio Scotland and  Scottish Book Trust last year.

The story was published in an anthology called Family Legends. Catherine read Mercy Boo Coo aloud and was interviewed by BBC Radio Scotland's Culture Cafe in May. You can read Mercy Boo Coo here.