Welcome to our Leicester Centre for Creative Writing website.

We’re glad you can join us, and hope you’ll become a regular visitor. The Centre is a diverse community of writers at De Montfort University working in a wide range of forms and genres including long and short fiction (SF, autobiographical, crime, literary, experimental), performance, poetry of all kinds, script (radio, independent film, graphic novel), and digital work. We are interested in all aspects of writing and practice research. You’ll find our writing profiles on this site, as well as some ‘essential viewing.’

The centre has three main areas of interest:

The promotion and exploration of Creative Writing as a field of Practice Research We have an innovative taught MA programme, and PhD students undertaking a range of projects including experimental fiction exploring the music scene in the 1990s, Multi-platform studies of the Millennial generation, a fantasy TV series exploring the trope of the ‘teen saviour’; and Biofiction exploring the painter Turner, and his mother’s incarceration in Bedlam.

The promotion of Creative Writing as a taught discipline

Of course we believe Creative Writing can be taught! And we believe in the community trust-in-mutual-adventure that emerges from doing so. As well as our innovative undergraduate programme, we are just launching a new summer school for aspiring writers who have never formally studied Creative Writing before. The idea is you get to experience workshopping, and classes deliver a foundation in the basic craft for writing effective fiction, poetry, and script.

Public Engagement

We are keen for the Centre to serve writing communities in the region and beyond, and to provide opportunities for hosting events and collaborations. Our flagship is the highly successful annual collaboration with Dahlia Books on States of Independence, an independent book festival in a day.

Thanks again for visiting: if you have an event idea or a PhD proposal, then why not get in touch?