Creative Writing has had a strong profile at Strathclyde for many years. Some of our students and staff have won, or been listed for, major international prizes and grants from awarding bodies including Creative Scotland, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC); the Wyndham-Campbell Literature Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize, Somerset Maugham Prize, Authors’ Club Novel Award and the Desmond Elliot Prize (for the best first novel in the UK).

Former staff and students include:

• Zoë Wicomb (South African-Scottish novelist and short story writer, author of You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, now Emeritus Professor)
• David Kinloch (long-time Professor of Poetry at Strathclyde, David is the author of five collections of poetry published by Carcanet, including Un Tour d’Ecosse and Finger of a Frenchman)
• Louise Welsh (author of The Cutting Room and many other successful crime novels)
• Margaret Elphinstone (historical fiction writer, author of The Sea Road)
• Andrew O'Hagan (ex-student, nominated three times for the Booker Prize, novelist and nonfiction author, also Editor at large at the London Review of Books)
• James Kelman (ex-student, hugely influential winner of the Book Prize for How Late it Was, How Late)
• Ali Smith (multi-award-winning novelist, short story writer and essayist, author of How to Be Both and The Season Quartet)

Recently, a number of our ex-students have gone on to publish extensively, either while on our courses, or soon after –

• Callum McSorley (ex-student, author of Squeaky Clean, youngest ever winner of the William McIlvanney Crime Prize 2023)
• Margaret McDonald (ex-student, author of Glasgow Boys, published 2024)
• Many students have published poetry, nonfiction and fiction especially while on the MLitt, including Tracy Cozette Moore (Glasgow Review of Books), Lucy Cunningham (New Writing Scotland, Gutter magazine (Mark Cohen, Nicola Rose), Hannah Liee (winner of Creative Futures award), 404 Ink Queer Anthology (Samuel Goldie). Megan Ridgeway, Kirsty E Watt and others have published pamphlets in the last couple of years

We combine the best creative instincts with first-hand experience in the creative industries. The world of storytelling is ever-changing, so we make sure to invite only the most relevant industry speakers from the worlds of broadcasting, publishing and digital media. We also regularly work with Glasgow’s Aye Write! Book Festival on events and creative writing workshops, as well as with other partners in the world of publishing, giving students how the real world of publishing works.

In your time with us, you'll be preparing for making a life in writing. Everyone has a story to tell. The challenge lies in learning how to tell it well.

Fiction & nonfiction

Rodge Glass is the author of eight books published since 2005, ranging across fiction, biography, memoir, critical writing and the graphic novel. His works have been nominated for or won ten national or international awards, he has appeared at book festivals from New York to Rome to Toronto, and his novels and stories have been translated into languages such as Italian, Serbian and Spanish. He is the winner of a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction, was nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Authors’ Club and Saltire Awards, and most recently won the 2023 Anne Brown Prize for nonfiction, judged by Gavin Esler and the Wigtown Book Festival, for his essay ‘On the Covenant’. Rodge’s books include: No Fireworks (Faber & Faber, 2005, novel), Hope for Newborns (Faber & Faber, 2008, novel), Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (Bloomsbury, 2008), Dougie’s War: A Soldier’s Story (Freight, 2010, with Dave Turbitt, graphic novel), Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs (Serpent’s Tail, 2013) and Stories for the EasyJet Generation (Freight, 2013, short story collection). His last book was Michel Faber: The Writer and his Work (Liverpool University Press, 2023), and his new book is a mixture of autobiography and biography, Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (Taproot Press, 2024, forthcoming). This includes the prize-winning essay ‘On the Covenant’.

Rodge is currently the Convener of the MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde.

More about creative writing

Andrew Meehan, Lecturer

I joined the university in 2018. I'm a novelist, screenwriter, and an experienced script executive, most notably at the Irish Film Board where, as Head of Development, I nurtured the development of numerous Irish feature-films, including the Oscar-nominated animated feature Song of the Sea; the ground-breaking comedy Good Vibrations, and the recent critical and commercial success Black 47. I was also involved as an executive on a number of Oscar-nominated and shortlisted short films.

Dr Rodge Glass, Course Convenor

The world of Creative Writing is in fact, many different worlds: poetry, screenwriting, hybrid writing, fiction (in all its many forms), creative non-fiction (which is also many things, from science to nature to memoir writing), and lots of other things besides. There's plenty of rigour, but plenty of freedom too. It's my idea of a good time.

David Kinloch, Professor Emeritus Poetry

David Kinloch is Professor Emeritus Poetry at the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of the collections Un Tour d’Ecosse (2001) In My Father’s House (2005), Finger of a Frenchman (2011) and In Search of Dustie-Fute (2017), all of which are published by Carcanet. In 2004 he was a winner of the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award and in 2006 held a Scottish Writers’ Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council. He was a founder editor of the poetry magazine Verse and was instrumental in setting up the first Scottish Writers’ Centre. He is the current Chair of the Edwin Morgan Trust.

Dr Maria Sledmere, Lecturer

I teach literature and creative writing across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with a particular interest in poetry, poetics and practice-based methods. My research spans perspectives from the environmental, energy and digital humanities and currently coalesces around issues of sleep, dreams and ecological thought. I also teach creative nonfiction, art writing, hybrid writing, transmedial writing, performance writing, short fiction and the novel. 

Dr Sarah Bernstein, Lecturer

I teach literature and creative writing and am especially interested in experimental or hybrid work, or work that engages in some way with the concept of difficulty. I write across genres and am particularly interested in the novel, short form prose, and the lyric essay.