TRUESTORY by MA Creative Writing graduate launches with masses of media coverage

Catherine Simpson signing Truestory

Hearty congratulations are overdue for Catherine Simpson, whose debut novel Truestory had a standing room only launch last month. The book started life as Catherine's major project when she was a student on our Creative Writing MA programme at Edinburgh Napier University, and we couldn't be prouder of her achievement with this novel.

Catherine and the publishing team at Sandstone have done an amazing job generating media coverage for the paperback, with related pieces in the Daily Telegraph, the Glasgow Herald and numerous other places [e.g. here, here and here]. Having just graced the Portobello Book Festival, she's talking at the Dundee Literary Festival later this month - 5.30pm on Friday Oct. 23rd, to be precise.

The official launch event at Waterstones in central Edinburgh was one of the best attended in years, according to staff at the central city bookstore. The numbers were swollen by Catherine's friends and family who came from far and wide for the launch.

Standing room only at the Truestory launch in Edinburgh

But it was also gratifying to see more than a few students past and present from the Creative Writing MA along to support the new book. Since graduating from the programme Catherine has kept building on what she learned with us. Her work has been shortlisted in prestigious competitions, and she has performed several times at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The success of Truestory is proof that talent, strategy and graft do reap rewards, if not always as fast as most writers would like. Catherine's book is the second major project from the MA programme at Edinburgh Napier to be published, following on from Wasp by Ian Garbutt earlier this year. We look forward to seeing more of our graduates achieve this breakthrough!

Graduate Shona Cook performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015

Graduate Shona Cook performed one of her stories at the 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival on Sunday August 23rd in the Spiegeltent, as part of the ever-popular Story Shop strand run by the City of Literate.

These free events see an emerging writer give a reading of their work for about ten minutes, with 17 scribes performing at this acclaimed festival in Charlotte Square. [Get a sneak preview of Shona's work at Audioboom.]

Shona graduated from the Creative Writing MA programme at Edinburgh Napier University last autumn, and since then has been hard at work finishing her major project novel.

Her appearance as part of Story Shop followed in the footsteps of past graduates from our MA, for whom this event has been a great showcase over the years. 2012 saw Ever Dundas, Sean Martin, Matthew Nadelhaft and Catherine Simpson take to the microphone as part of Story Shop.

The following year Catherine was back again, along with fellow graduate Mark Craddock. Last year Nicole Brandon and Alison Summers - a graduate from our very first cohort, the class of 2009-10 - did us proud in the Spiegeltent. We look forward to seeing more Edinburgh Napier students and graduates being part of Story Shop in years to come - long may it continue!

Updated: Admissions process for MA Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University

The original version of this post is the most popular page on our blog, but we figured it was time to update the information - here's the 2017 version...

Unique is a good way to describe the postgrad creative writing programme at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. For a start, we put genre fiction front and centre in our course. If you love writing and reading science fiction, fantasy, crime or horror, most MFAs and MAs don't want to know - but we embrace great genre writing.

Another unique focus at Edinburgh Napier is comics and graphic novels, which most other programmes ignore. In fact, we love this medium so much we devote an entire module about it, Writing Graphic Fiction. [Good news: no talent for drawing required!] We also specialise in creative non-fiction, applying the techniques for developing and writing a novel to a research-based narrative.

Edinburgh Napier's postgraduate creative writing MA does not offer a poetry option. I repeat, poetry is not a requirement. There are plenty of other great courses with brilliant poets on the faculty - if you want to study poetry, seek them out. We have had prize-winning poets as students on our programme, but we don't teach or critique poetry.

There are no peer review workshops in Creative Writing MA classes at Edinburgh Napier. I repeat, there are no peer review workshops. This boggles the mind of some people, as such workshops are the bedrock of creative writing pretty much everywhere else. But we don't have them in our classes. Not one!

Instead, we set weekly writing assignments and expect you to bring the results to class. You're encouraged to critically self-reflect on your work [with prompts from us], and to share that thinking. You get professional editorial feedback on your writing and your thinking, delivered masterclass-style in class. And you get six hours of one-to-one mentoring.

If that sounds enticing, here's how you apply for our course. Like so much of our programme, the admissions process we use to select students also seems to be unique...

First, you fill in and submit an application form [there are links to an online version top right of this page]. We welcome applicants who already have a degree - it doesn't have to be in English, English literature or some form of creative writing]. We also recognise prior learning and writing experience in people who don't have a degree yet.

The crucial section of your form is the personal statement. This is where you tell us about your aspirations as a writer, and why our programme can help. Here's a hint: don't just paste in your usual personal statement. We always look to see if applicants have done their research on the course and have enthusiasm for our specialisms.

Do your homework. Google us to read interviews we've given about our ethos, our approach to  creative writing. Read the other entries on this blog. If you want your application taken seriously, show us you've taken our course seriously. Plus: that statement is a first chance to showcase your ability to write. Blow our socks off!

All being well, we'll progress you to the next stage of our admissions process. We don't ask for a writing sample with your application. Instead - if we like your application form - we'll invite you to undertake a writing challenge. We ask you to write us an original short story of up to 1000 words, and you'll have two weeks to submit it.

To make this a challenge, we give you a choice of first sentences. You select one and use that as the opening for your story. We also let you decide when we send the brief, so you choose the two weeks that best suit you. We even include the criteria we'll be using to assess your submission, so the process is more transparent.

Once you've sent in your story, we read and assess it. Some applicants get turned away at this stage [we take roughly one out of every five people who apply]. If your story shows promise, we will invite you to a selection interview - face to face or via Skype if you live a long way from Edinburgh.

The interview is the last stage. It can last up to an hour. During that time we use one or two teaching and learning activities from our course to assess you as an applicants. This  gives you insight into our programme and how we teach it. Rest assured, your interview should be an enjoyable experience, and not an interrogation!

We let you know within a day if we're offering you a place - no waiting for months to find out [and no fee to apply to the course, either!]. We use a rolling admissions process: once we're full, we're full. Our course takes a maximum of 16 full-time students a year, and up to four part-timers who are with us for two years.

If you still have any questions, feel free to get in touch before you formally apply. Email lecturer David Bishop here: d.bishop@napier.ac.uk . The sooner you apply, the better your chances...

Major project secures literary agent for another Edinburgh Napier MA Creative Writing graduate

Ever Dundas [photo © Chris Scott]

Hearty congratulations to graduate Ever Dundas who has just signed with leading literary agent Jenny Brown. It was Ever's stunning first novel Goblin that sealed the deal, which was her major project while studying MA Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University.

"I met Jenny back when I pitched Goblin in the Book Week Scotland at Looking Glass Books, back in November 2013," Ever recalls. "It seems so long ago now, but that event was a turning point."

When the time came to submit her full manuscript, Ever had no doubt about whom to approach first. "Jenny has such warmth and enthusiasm, and she's really excited about Goblin. Seeing her always cheers me up!"

Ever was a part-time student on the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier, graduating in 2011. But she hasn't been idle since then, with short stories published in various literary magazines and several first places in writing competitions [not to mention prize-winning photography and her gift for eerie collage artworks!].

We look forward to more news about the future of Goblin, a haunting narrative that spans decades and genres with breathless ease. In the meantime, you can visit Ever's blog or follow her on Twitter.

AWP 2015: despatches from the conference #5

Literary Citizenship: It’s Not About You

Sam Kelly writes: This event on the final day of #AWP15 was one of those I most eagerly anticipated - and it was the one I found myself fearing, the nearer it approached.

This phrase “Literary Citizenship” has, over the last couple of years, become central to my thinking about our Creative Writing MA. I use it to describe the foundational ethics of our shared practice, and to describe the place of the MA in its wider community. And (invariably accompanied by variations on a theme of “it’s not about you”, with more or less admonishment) I also use it as a perpetual challenge to students. It underpins an entire trimester of learning and assessment on a module I teach called Innovation and Authorship.

So why was my excitement at this discussion, on a concept so close to my heart, tinged with utter dread? Because it’s a phrase I nicked from Stephanie Vanderslice (someone I haven’t yet managed to meet, though her influence on our programme is mighty). I stole it with little forethought and scant research. I knew what it meant to me, and what it could do for students as an idea, and – since nobody else in the UK appeared to be using it – I just went ahead and attached to it all the values and aspirations I wanted it to express.

What if I was wrong? What if the first opportunity to hear people actually talking about this thing sent my beloved version straight to the bin, and my module along with it? The panel was to be chaired by the formidable Lori May who has done no less, it turned out, than write an entire book on the subject. Yikes.

The ensuring five-way discussion touched on more aspects of literary citizenship than I can possibly summarise here: the task is, in any case, made harder by the rash of increasingly jubilant exclamation marks all over my notes. So what follows is just a few quotes from the varied definitions offered by the panel.

It’s a way of creating communities, through active engagement in writing, reading, editing, project-creation and entrepreneurship. Its purpose is to enable change.

It’s an opportunity to “pay it forward”. Generosity is the new currency.

It’s an ethics of co-operation, not competition.

It’s a practice of humility; of learning from others.

It’s a way of finding out who you are, by discovering what you have to offer beyond the pages of your work.

It’s a way of sustaining yourself in the times when you can’t write, by attending to the relationships that nourish your practice.

It’s related to the Eight Stages of Charity.

And it can be neatly encapsulated in the following simple instruction from the panel: “don’t be an ass”.

But what do literary citizens actually do? The participants described an inspiring range of projects, enterprises and practices. 

If you’re looking for literary citizens, they’re the people creating mentoring relationships, fairer business models for literary journals, writers’ groups, accessible MFA programs, websites, residences, prizes, college scholarships and pop-up conferences. They repurpose buildings, set up small presses, run free community workshops, and invent new social justice projects. 

 Really, they’re everywhere.

Here at Edinburgh Napier, literary citizenship means all of this; maybe even a little bit more, because we also use it as a tailored journey of self-questioning, self-definition and self-development for students. As the session drew to a close, it was good to feel part of this community of literary citizens, and to feel that we too have something to offer to the growth of this concept. And now we even have required reading for next year’s cohort: Lori May’s The Write Crowd.

Perfect end to a wonderful conference.

AWP 2015: despatches from the conference #4

But I Need My Day Job: Creating a Kick-Ass Writing Education in Your Own Community

Sam Kelly writes: This session was delivered by two truly inspiring organisations: the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and the Lighthouse in Denver. Putting aside for a minute my dream of extending our MA into community spaces - Edinburgh could really use a Loft or a Lighthouse – I came away with one important question. How can higher education be more like this?

In their enthusiasm for the ethics, values and successes of community education, the panel neatly nailed everything wrong with bare-minimum standards of Creative Writing teaching in the academy.

The exclusion of popular fiction from the majority of MA and MFA programmes was the subject of David Bishop’s panel, and that resonated again here. For the Loft and the Lighthouse, an absolute openness to all genres is a core principle.

AWP 2015: despatches from the conference #3

Sam Kelly in Minneapolis

Teaching Artists Teaching Artists

This panel was a series of presentations on the outcomes of a particularly elegant and mischievously innovative research project by students and recent graduates from US  Creative Writing programmes. [The panel was almost too exciting for Sam Kelly, but she managed to write what follows...]

First, some background. The American model of Creative Writing teaching (which the UK inherited almost wholesale) is limited to two defining practices: composition theory, and the peer-review workshop. This panel at AWP was based on asking the same questions David and I faced when we started designing our MA at Edinburgh Napier University: Why? What exactly is taught, and learned, and assessed by this method? Might there not be better ways of doing it?

Each researcher who presented had done something similar to the long conversations David and I had over the blank slate that became our MA, during which we looked for all our answers outside the defining ideological assumptions of academic creative writing. But the cumulative effect of the project described was extraordinary.

Each student chose a different creative discipline: visual arts, music composition, dance, and architecture. They shadowed teachers, asking detailed questions about pedagogical theories and methods. They observed classes intensively, and drew informed conclusions. Then they applied them to the nature, purpose and potential of Creative Writing in the academy.

In the process, it seems we all hit on all the same inspirational junctures: the ethics of Paulo Friere, the concept of co-creation rather than teaching, and the challenge of enabling purposeful self-knowledge and self-sustainability in committed creators. These are the foundations of our MA at Edinburgh Napier, as well as the outcomes of the session at AWP.

So, what emerged?

AWP 2015: despatches from the conference #2

When Words Collide – How Creative Writing Programs Address Popular Fiction: this panel was among the first offerings at AWP 2015, scheduled at nine on the opening morning. Convened by Edinburgh Napier lecturer David Bishop, a panel of four discussed the place of popular fiction in Creative Writing programmes – still a rare topic at conferences like AWP.

David had invited three contributors with diverse experiences and energetically polemical views when it comes to teaching aspiring commercial novelists - Barbara Duffey from Dakota Wesleyan University, Nicole Peeler from Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania, and Vicki Stiefel from Clark University in Massachusetts.

Barbara Duffey, Dakota Wesleyan

David kicked off the panel by describing the Edinburgh Napier ethos: our defining love of ambitious, boundary-troubling genre fiction, and our abandonment of the traditional peer-review workshop in favour of intensive teaching in craft, technique and professional practice.

Nicole Peeler, Seton Hill University

A wide-ranging exchange followed in answer to three questions posed by David: Why is there such a distance between Creative Writing teaching and the practice of popular fiction? Are academic Creative Writing and popular fiction in fact different disciplines, requiring different teaching methods? And does popular fiction attract a different kind of Creative Writing student?

Barbara Duffey and Nicole Peeler both spoke about the ideological inheritance of Creative Writing as a university subject. On one hand, the adherence of traditional literary studies to the Romantic notion of authorship, which views genre conventions as anathema to “creativity”, and on the other, Creative Writing teaching as a practice still rooted in the Modernist experiment.

David Bishop limbers up

Against these tired but largely unquestioned assumptions, the panel offered quick-witted statements of the obvious. The galvanising relationship between constraint and innovation was described: the demands of genre necessarily force a higher level of originality.

Vicki Stiefel, Clark University

For panellists who successfully write both, high quality genre fiction is much more difficult to achieve than plausible “literature” in their experience. In any case, all agreed that “literary fiction” was quite clearly also a genre – one mischievously defined by Nicole as “non-popular fiction”.

On the topic of teaching methods, Nicole brought an unabashed vocational ethos to the table. She wants her students to make money, and expects strong business awareness and reader orientation. For her, the key to professionalism is finishing the novel – the defining requirement of Seton Hill's MFA.

Regardless of individual inflections, there was vehement consensus that writing a decent novel is absolutely nothing like practising literary criticism. Vicki Steifel pointed out that to write a book you need a toolkit that works, and recommended Techniques of the Selling Writer as a useful primer.

Barbara wondered whether toolkit-based methods shouldn’t work equally well for all kinds of fiction. She noted the important thing isn’t the differentiation, but understanding the systems of power that define the literary within the academy, and legitimate the privileging of this genre above all others.

Then followed Barbara’s masterstroke: unattributed extracts from one novel defined by the critics as pretty much chicklit, and one hailed as an “American Chekhov”. She asked the audience which – sentence for sentence – appeared to contain most well-crafted writing? And which did we think was which? Put to the vote, the canny audience got both answers right.

A brief analysis of genre students' tattoos and facial piercings followed, along with consideration of their arguably more singular focus and vocational commitment. As the session’s defining metaphor for the work of editorial mentors reached its peak (“picking the corn out of a great, steaming pile of horsecrap” – thanks, Nicole!) the discussion drew to a close.


Final score: Popular Fiction 1, Unpopular Fiction 0.

AWP 2015: despatches from the conference #1

Calm before the storm: Sam Kelly setting up our AWP Bookfair table

So, we’re back from Minneapolis, just about over the jetlag, and busily picking through all our notes from AWP 2015 - the world's biggest creative writing conference. Thank you to the scores of enthusiastic people who came to chat with us at our table in the bookfair. It was wonderful to meet you all and we hope many of you will become Edinburgh Napier MA students.

[By the way, this entry is being written by Sam Kelly, programme leader for the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University. I don't normally write the blog, but I'm borrowing it to make a few quick posts about my favourite AWP conference sessions.]

We were overwhelmed with aspiring writers wanting to know more about our unique programme. The fact that we embrace writing science fiction and fiction at Edinburgh Napier, that we love fiction genres like horror, crime and mystery made us stand out from the crowd at AWP. There are a few programmes in the US that focus on popular fiction genres - but these are usually low residency course [called distance learning in the UK].

You don't like toffee? David Bishop welcomes visitors to our table

We got to meet and know a lot of fascinating colleagues from creative writing programmes across the States. We’re already in talks about some innovative potential link-ups with US universities in the coming years, and eagerly anticipating visits over the summer. Exciting times!

But it wasn’t all japing around with toffee and tartan on our stand: for us, the conference was also about learning, exploring and sharing teaching practice. We were lucky enough to attend some truly inspiring panel discussions, and they'll be the subject of two more posts. Watch this space...

AWP 2015 - Minneapolis, here we come!

The Edinburgh Napier MA Creative Writing programme team is getting ready for AWP 2015, which is in Minneapolis from April 9-11 - that's next week! What is AWP? Just the world's largest creative writing conference, attracting thirteen thousand people to more than 500 events. 

For the first time we're having our own stand at the AWP conference - Table 754 in the bookfair. Programme leader Sam Kelly and lecturer David Bishop will be happy to talk about our course and its unique approach to creative writing. [Spoilers: we love genre fiction, graphic novels, and creative non-fiction; we don't have a poetry option or any peer-review workshops.]

We'll be at Table 754 pretty much all three days, but if we're not around you can always contact us via Twitter - Sam Kelly is @portykelly while David Bishop is @davidbishop. Don't be shy, come and say hello - we don't bite!

David is also hosting one of the first panel discussions happening at AWP this year. It starts 9am - yes, really! - in Room 208 A and B on Level 2. "When worlds collide: how creative programs address popular fiction" will feature four speakers from different universities - three US, one UK - discussing how they approach writing and teaching genre fiction. Here's the pitch:

"Popular fiction and creative writing programs have long been worlds apart on both sides of the Atlantic. But what happens when students on such programs aspire to write popular fiction? This panel will discuss the challenges of opportunities of working with genre writing in an academic context, with speakers drawn from programs that tend to eschew popular fiction and those that embrace it."

Alongside David on the panel will be Nicole Peeler from Seton Hill University, Barbara Duffey from Dakota Wesleyan University, and Vicki Stiefel from Clark University. Should be a blast!

POSTPONED: MA Creative Writing coffee morning

STOP PRESS: Due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to postpone the MA Creative Writing coffee morning, which was scheduled to happen tomorrow - Saturday, March 28th. We're hoping to reschedule the event for later in the summer, so watch this space for details.

But if you'd like to know more about our unique MA course, you don't have to wait. Get in touch with programme leader Sam Kelly and she'll be delighted to have an informal private meeting with you face-to-face or via Skype.

To arrange an appointment, email Sam - s.kelly@napier.ac.uk - or phone her on 0131 455 6381.

2015 success stories for MA students, graduates

The cover of prestigious literary magazine Ambit's issue 219

Only a few weeks into 2015 and we're already celebrating success stories achieved by current students and recent graduates of the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University. For example, a story by part-timer Sasha Callaghan is featured in prestigious literary quarterly Ambit. Those Steps Ahead was developed through the MA's unique mentoring module.

Recent graduate Anne Hogg had her first professional production as a playwright last month when Glasgow's Oran Mor selected her two-hander Butterfly as the lead-off show for a new season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint. The play is a black comedy about complicated lives, loves, buried secrets and a geriatric baby with an extreme fear of heights.

Final covers have been released for two graduates' novels being published this year. Wasp Or, A Very Sweet Power by Ian Garbutt is due out in March from Polygon. Here's the official blurb for the novel:

For a gentleman seeking more prestigious company amidst the bawdy houses of an eighteenth-century city, the House of Masques provides the perfect no-touch escorts. Girls, highly educated and socially trained, are geisha-like status symbols for politicians, bankers and royalty alike. Into this world comes Bethany Harris, a disgraced governess who has been rescued from a madhouse and transformed into the Masque named Wasp. She soon discovers that personal horrors, coupled with dark ambition, are leading to a crisis that threatens to destroy the House and everyone in it...

Catherine Simpson's Truestory is due out in September from Sandstone. Like Wasp, it started life as a major project on the Creative Writing MA. Here is the official blurb for the novel:

Alice's life is dictated by her autistic son, Sam, who refuses to leave their remote farm. With money running out and marriage to Duncan foundering, it seems Alice's life is shrinking to a vanishing point. But the arrival of a rootless wanderer creates fresh opportunities and dangers for everyone. Truestory examines how we are all trapped in our own ways but still have the power to can rewrite our lives. It looks at what happens when sacrifice slithers towards martyrdom, but ultimately will fill you with hope...

We're going to AWP 2015 in Minneapolis

It's official! The entire programme team for Edinburgh Napier University's unique Creative Writing MA is attending AWP 2015 this April in Minneapolis. What's AWP? Just the world's largest creative writing conference, attracting thirteen thousand people to more than 500 events. In the past our programme has sent individual observers - this year, we're all going.

If you are planning to visit AWP 2015 in Minneapolis, make sure you come along to see us at Table 754 in the official conference bookfair. Programme leader Sam Kelly will be happy to talk about our course and its unique approach to postgrad creative writing. [Spoilers: we love and teach genre fiction, graphic novels, creative non-fiction; and we don't have workshops.]

What's more, lecturer David Bishop has had a panel discussion accepted into the official AWP programme. "When worlds collide: how creative programs address popular fiction" will feature four speakers from different universities - three US, one UK - discussing the burning issue of how they approach the writing and teaching of genre fiction. Here's the pitch:

"Popular fiction and creative writing programs have long been worlds apart on both sides of the Atlantic. But what happens when students on such programs aspire to write popular fiction? This panel will discuss the challenges of opportunities of working with genre writing in an academic context, with speakers drawn from programs that tend to eschew popular fiction and those that embrace it."

The panel discussion is one of the first events at this year's AWP conference, starting at 9am on Thursday April 9th in Room 208 A&B, on Level 2. Alongside David on the panel will be Nicole Peeler from Seton Hill University, Barbara Duffey from Dakota Wesleyan University, and Vicki Stiefel from Clark University. It should be a blast - hope to see you there!