Oxford Creative Writing Summer School 2024

You will write, develop your technique, sharpen your critical faculties and discuss your work in small, focused seminars. Each weekday you will attend a talk given by an author, publisher, agent, or editor. You will live and work in beautiful Exeter College – founded in 1314 – the environment that nurtured J R R Tolkien, Philip Pullman, Martin Amis, William Morris, and many others.

At the end of your three weeks, you will have acquired new skills, made new friends, and developed a fresh portfolio of creative writing.

• A three-week residential summer school.
• Take part in interactive seminars featuring writing exercises and group discussion.
• Benefit from guidance by tutors who are both published authors and experienced teachers.
• Attend daily talks and readings given by established authors, agents, editors and others.
• Participate in open mic nights and peer-led workshop sessions.
• Study and live at Exeter College, founded 1314 -one of Oxford University's oldest colleges.
• Enjoy a range of social events, including walking tours and excursions.

What is meant by intermediate and advanced?

The intermediate strand of the summer school is open-access; it is for keen readers who have written regularly and read widely over a sustained period. Students on the intermediate programme take two seminars, one in fiction and one in creative non-fiction. Applications for the intermediate strand do not require samples of written work.

The advanced strand of the summer school is an intensive programme which is suitable for writers who have completed or nearly completed a single-honours degree in Creative Writing or English Literature, or who have taken a significant number of courses in creative writing or English literature. Students on the advanced strand are likely to have developed specialisms in their work; they choose two from seven available seminars: creative non-fiction, fiction (two options), poetry, scriptwriting, short story, and teen/young adult fiction. Applications for the advanced strand include a statement of purpose and samples of written work.

Both strands live and work in beautiful Exeter College, socialising, dining and attending plenary lectures together.

Seminars

All of the seminars involve writing exercises, group discussion, and the development of a portfolio of creative writing.

Each seminar has two two-hour meetings per week. Classes typically contain no more than 15 students.

Contact hours

The programme provides you with a minimum of 46.5 contact hours, comprising:

• 24 hours of seminar meetings (12 hours per seminar); and
• 22.5 hours of talks and readings (15 sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours).

Social programme

You can enjoy optional social events throughout the summer school. These may include a walking tour of Oxford, after-dinner talks and weekend excursions to sites of literary and/or historical interest. Most of these activities incur additional costs.

You'll have an opportunity to share ideas and work with your fellow students at open mic nights (one per week) and informal peer-led workshop sessions (two per week).

Beyond the summer school, Oxford is a vibrant and cosmopolitan city with a busy cultural and social scene offering a wide variety of plays and shows, concerts, films and exhibitions.

Programme details

Intermediate-level seminars

Creative Non-Fiction

Writing about real lives and experiences – your own, or someone else’s – is rewarding but also daunting. What if you have too much information, or your story involves other people? How do you fill the gaps? How do you keep the reader reading? What if your core purpose is to write creatively not about a life, but about a specific place or time, journey or sickness, idea or vocation? And when does storytelling tip over into fiction? In this course we will use practical exercises, examples, discussion and the sharing of writing to explore ways of imagining, researching, developing, shaping and voicing real-life material to form a narrative.

Tutor: Dr Emma Darwin’s memoir, This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin (Holland House Books, 2019), explores her disastrous attempt to write a novel about her family. Her debut novel, The Mathematics of Love (Headline Review, 2006), was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ and other awards; her second, A Secret Alchemy (Headline Review, 2009), was a Sunday Times bestseller; Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction (John Murray Learning) was published in 2016. She has a PhD in Creative Writing (London) and was an Associate Lecturer at the Open University; she blogs at This Itch of Writing.

Fiction

By looking at techniques used by published writers, we shall learn how we can bring our own stories to life. Practical exercises and discussion of each other's work will deepen our understanding of fundamentals such as character, description, plot, dialogue, point of view and suspense. We shall also experiment with different narrative forms. Last but not least, the course will explore how to rewrite and edit - vital skills for your creative writing in the future.

Tutor: Dr Lisa O’Donnell is Lecturer in Creative Writing at City University, London and Tutor in Creative Writing at Curtis Brown Creative. Her first novel, The Death of Bees, was published by Random House in 2012 and Harper Collins in 2013. Her second, Closed Doors, was published by Random House in 2013 and by Harper Collins in 2014. The Death of Bees was awarded The Commonwealth Book Prize in 2014 at The Hay Festival presented by the late John Le Carré. It has been translated into 19 languages and longlisted for the Barnes and Nobles Discover Great Writers Award in the US, and shortlisted for the Waterstones First Book Award and the Anobi First Book Award. It also won an ALEX AWARD in 2014 awarded by the American Library Association.

Advanced-level seminar options

Creative Non-Fiction

We tell stories about ourselves and others every day. Taking a close look at autobiography, memoir, and biography, we will discuss how these stories are told and the extent to which this has an impact on what we think we know about our own lives and those of others. The relationship between narrator and subject, facts and invention, transnational perspectives and questions of style and form, including online lives, in creative non-fiction life-writing will be explored. There will be opportunities to share our own writing and publication plans. 

Tutor: Dr Jane McVeigh is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton. She publishes on different aspects of life-writing. Her biography, Richmal Crompton, Author of Just William: A Literary Life (forthcoming 2022) considers Crompton’s life, the extent to which it influenced her writing and why she tried to keep so much of it hidden from view. In Collaboration with British Literary Biography: Haunting Conversations (Palgrave, 2017), explores the relationship between a biographer and his or her subjects.

Fiction: Turning Ideas Into Narratives

This course is aimed at those who are starting to write prose but do not yet feel fully confident. Using a variety of exercises and some examples from literature, we shall investigate the formation of character, and develop character arcs. Then we shall develop story and plot outlines together, planning scenes. Finally, we shall attempt to identify and discuss your unique strengths and preferences with a view to finding your USP - unique selling point.

Tutor: Dr Rachel Bentham has been Royal Literary Fellow at Bath University, and teaches for both Bristol and Bath Spa Universities. Her plays and short stories have been regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and her poetry is internationally published. She has recently completed a novel set in nineteenth-century Tahiti. A recent collection of haiku was called Let All Tongues Flower (Firewater Press, 2013); and her most recent collection, also of haiku, is titled Other Roads North (2019) and reached number one on Amazon.

Fiction: Fine-Tuning Your Writing

This course is designed to help you hone your craft as a writer and see your project through to its completion. We shall start by examining your aims and motivation, troubleshooting any problems you are having in maintaining commitment and progress. We shall explore how to give your writing maximum resonance and power, analysing how you can use voice and point of view, give your characters extra depth and weave together story strands, themes and images. Finally, we shall look at sending your work out into the world, with workshopping and advice on editing and pitching.

Tutor: Lorna Fergusson is an experienced writing coach and editor who has taught on various OUDCE programmes since 2002. She has republished her novel, The Chase, originally published by Bloomsbury. Her chapter on Pre-writing appears in Studying Creative Writing published by Frontinus. She has won the Historical Novel Society’s short story award with ‘Salt’ which appears in An Oxford Vengeance. She has been shortlisted for Macmillan’s Write Now Prize and was runner-up for the Mogford Prize in 2021. Her new book for creative writers, The Unputdownable Writer’s Mindset, will be published in 2022.

Scriptwriting

This course is based on the study and creation of scripts for stage, screen and radio and on helping aspiring dramatists to develop a practice to engage with a golden age of script writing. Convincing characters in coherent plots, with a keen awareness of genre, is the basis of all good fiction. We shall explore such core elements, culminating in the submission of a short script. In the third week, students can workshop a script begun outside the course. Dramaturgy will be strictly focused to help writers to develop individual writing for performance projects, using processes that are ‘industry standard’.

Tutor: Carl Schoenfeld has three decades’ film industry experience as writer and producer. He pioneered new approaches with award-winning, including BAFTA-nominated film and TV productions for the BBC, and Channel4. His screenplay expertise is also called upon by Creative Europe. For the British Film Institute, he runs a Screenwriting Workshop through his Online Screenwriting Academy.

The Short Story

This course encourages you to become a braver, more vital writer by experimenting with the short story form. As close to poetry as it is to prose, the short story is ideal for testing uncommon characters and situations, innovative structures and syntax. Unlock voices and creative techniques that will transform your writing practise. In the final week we will focus on intensive self-editing and how to transform a saggy, weak story into a powerful, shapely narrative, through close examination of language, rhythm, energy and pace. Perfecting short fiction is a great way to build your track record through publication in literary journals and entry to awards judged by agents and publishers. 

Tutor: Susannah Rickards' collection of short fiction, Hot Kitchen Snow, drawn from experiences of growing up in North East England and working in East Africa, won the international Scott Prize in for best debut fiction collection in 2010, and is published by Salt. Her writing regularly appears in journals and anthologies and has been broadcast on BBC radio. She read English at Oxford University and now lives in Surrey, UK, where she writes and mentors new and established authors.

Teen/Young Adult Fiction

The teen/young adult fiction market has become one of the most exciting, and rewarding, areas of publishing. This course, run by an established novelist, will look at the way successful writers have chosen subjects and themes, explored fantasy and/or social realism, and found exactly the right voice to appeal to younger readers. It will also explore such key topics as planning, plot development and perspective. Students will be guided in the development of a story of their own, and there will be plenty of opportunities to workshop ideas and get feedback on stories as they progress.

Tutor: Julie Hearn is the critically acclaimed author of a number of novels for young adults, all published by Oxford University Press. Included are: Follow Me Down, shortlisted for the Branford Boase First Novel Award, The Merrybegot, shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Highland Children’s Book Award, and Rowan the Strange, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and described by The Guardian as “nothing short of extraordinary”. Her eighth novel, I am NOT adorable, written for younger children, was published by Jolly Heron in 2018 and a collection of short stories, The Princess Thing, is in the pipeline.

Recommended reading

Each seminar has its own requirements for preparatory reading. Students will have access to the Continuing Education library (around 10 minutes' walk from Exeter College), but no other Oxford University libraries.

Certification

All students who complete the programme will receive an attendance certificate.

Those seeking credit at their home institution may request a detailed certificate which lists contact hours (for talks, readings and seminars), an assessment of their contribution to seminar discussions, grades achieved for written work, and the number of private study hours required. Certificates will usually be sent to students' home institutions within a month of the end of the summer school.

As Oxford University does not offer credit for this summer school, those wishing to obtain credit from their home institution for attending this programme must make appropriate arrangements with that institution in advance.

Course aims

Each seminar has its own course aim and objectives.

Teaching methods

Students will attend a programme of talks and readings.

Elements of seminar teaching will normally include:

• mini lectures by tutors;
• tutor-led class discussions;
• writing exercises;
• small group activities; and
• individual student presentations.

Students will attend short one-to-ones with their tutors to receive feedback on their written work.

Learning outcomes

Each seminar has its own learning outcomes.