NEW HIGHER LEVEL COURSE ON WRITING SHORT FICTION FROM OCA

The Open College of the Arts (OCA), founded by Michael Young in 1987 to widen access to creative arts education at undergraduate level, has launched a new course in writing short fiction http://www.oca-uk.com/subjects/creative-writing/writing-2-writing-short-fiction.html

Students start to study when it suits them

Offered part-time through open learning, the course has been designed for practitioners who have a particular interest in developing their skills in writing short fiction but do not want to put their work forward for assessment, as well as for students studying for a BA Honours degree in creative writing. Students are not tied to term times and can start the course at a time to suit them.

OCA’s BA Honours degree in creative writing is the only creative writing undergraduate degree in the UK offered through open learning. The college’s creative writing course leader is the northern Irish essayist, poet and academic Chris Arthur.

The course aims to inspire and encourage students to practise independent creative writing within the genre of the short story. Writing Short Fiction covers: starting to write; elements of story; point of view, language and structure in very short fiction; the historical background to the modern short story; and contextual themes including gender, post-colonialism, power struggles and disability.

Course takes around one year to complete

The course takes around a year to complete for students who study for 12 hours each week. It attracts 60 points under the Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATs).

Students who complete the course will be able to demonstrate understanding of structure, form and technique in short fiction in a creative body of work; show discrimination in drafting and editing their own texts; show evidence of wide critical reading; and critically review a contemporary collection, movement or writer of short fiction. They will have built up a portfolio of short fiction writing which has undergone appraisal and revision.

OCA’s Academic Director Jane Horton said: ‘Short fiction is consistently a popular choice for creative writing students. OCA’s new short fiction course gives students a structure for developing their own writing, asks them to confront the most up-to-date thinking on the genre and gives them the opportunity to critique the work of published writers of short fiction.’


For further information, contact: Elizabeth Underwood, PR and Communications (elizabethunderwood@oca-uk.com, telephone 07590 848783).