With the expertise of Essex's scholars and creative practitioners, students will gain a distinctively unique degree which blends together the highly complementary disciplines of literature and creative writing. Students will study a broad range of writing, from lyric poetry to contemporary fiction, whilst the flexible nature of the MA Literature and Creative Writing degree allows them to choose a creative-practice pathway or a theoretical pathway. Studying literature and creative writing at University of Essex means that students can build their degree around their interests.

Explore literature across time, geography and genre, while being challenged with Essex's practice-based creative writing modules. Such modules, like the Creative Writing workshop, helps to hone student's literary craft and technique, emphasizing innovation and experimentation. Students study an eclectic range of topics such as: European Avant-Gardes of the early twentieth century, global writing and literature in English, lyric poetry, psychogeography, writing audio and digital drama. Essex has nurtured a long tradition of distinguished writers whose work has shaped literature as it is known today, from past giants such as the American poets Robert Lowell and Ted Berrigan, to contemporary writers such as mythographer and novelist Dame Marina Warner, and Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri. The Department is a vibrant conservatoire of scholars and practitioners who are committed to unlocking creative personal responses to literature and creative writing. This distinctive environment is possible because they are a community of award-winning novelists, poets and playwrights, as well as leading literature specialists.

A good literature and creative writing degree opens many doors and Essex's students have gone on to work in a number of careers such as writers, editors, publishers, scholars, university lecturers, teachers, journalists, arts administrators, theatre artistic directors, drama advisers, and translators.