Creative Writing Glasgow

The illustrations on this page include (below) the co-founder of the M Litt programme in Glasgow, Professor Philip Hobsbaum, who worked jointly with Professor Willy Maley; and (left) Professor Edwin Morgan, after whom the Center is named, and Liz Lochhead, currently Poet in Residence at the University.


Members of the Creative Writing programme at the University of Glasgow will find here news, schedules, notes on tutors, a history of the programme, descriptions of courses, handout material and other data relating to their work.


Your student representatives are:
Group A: Dan Spenser
Group B: Gwen Fontenoy
Group C: Sean McLaughlin
Group D: Joyce Henderson


A thumbnail survey

The Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing is the focus for the extensive Creative Writing activities of the Department of English and the wider School. It is named after Professor Edwin Morgan, for many years a member of the Department of English Literature and Scotland’s pre-eminent poet (and the first national Laureate, as well as the Glasgow city Laureate), author of poems, plays, essays, translations, creative collaborations, and much else.

The Centre was established in 2000 and has subsequently been a focus for the distinguished creative record of the Department and School, epitomised in the celebrated M Litt. Currently the Centre boasts a growing resource centre for all graduate students, with primary texts, a video and sound library, a periodical collection and creative work space. It also hosts a series of major and minor events: readings, lectures, master-classes and seminars with visiting speakers of national and international stature. Associated with the Edwin Morgan Centre are the established literary magazine PN Review, published from the Centre itself, and the publishing house Carcanet, with an Editorial office in the centre. The M Litt students traditionally edit and publish an annual anthology of their work, generally in collaboration with one or another Scottish literary publishing house. The M Litt students and a selection of outstanding undergraduates edit and produce separate on-line magazines as well.

In addition to running the taught M Litt in Creative Writing and developing the first taught PhD in the discipline, the centre brings together a wide range of people with shared creative and research interests in fiction, poetry, life-writing and script writing. Students and faculty involved in the work of the centre meet in a variety of creative and research contexts: tutorials, seminars, editorial committees, workshops, master classes, Q&A sessions, public readings etc. The annual PN Review Lecture, administered by the Centre, features major critical and creative voices associated with modern poetry. Professor Christopher Ricks inaugurates the series. Other visitors, past and future, include Margaret Atwood, Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Carlos Fuentes, Lorna Goodison, Andrew Motion, Sharon Olds and Frederic Raphael. In the recent past, speakers have included, among others: John Agard, Roddy Doyle, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Les Murray, Grace Paley, Jackie Kay, A. L. Kennedy, Bernard MacLaverty, Brian McCabe and Grace Paley. Publishers include Peter Straus (Picador), Mitzi Angel (Fourth Estate), Jamie Byng (Canongate), Sean Costello (Mercat Press/Crescent Fiction), Judy Moir (Penguin), Hannah Griffiths (Faber) and Bob McDevitt (Hodder/Headline).

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