Dr Kevan Manwaring shares his journey, illustrating the profound impact of a master's degree on professional writing success.
Dr Kevan Manwaring is Course Leader for AUB Online’s MA Creative Writing. Through his own story, he highlights the many ways in which a Master's in creative writing can enhance your career prospects.
How will undertaking an online master's in creative writing advance your professional writer career? Well, drawing upon my own experience, I hope I can convey to you the amazing, positive impact it can have on not only your writing, but on your life.
I returned to university study after a ten-year gap, a decade filled with travel, moving house, various jobs and life events. This rounded life experience provided to be really valuable, not only in terms of the material I had to draw upon, but also as my maturity as an adult.
An undergraduate degree can be, among other things, a necessary rite of passage: separated from your family, hometown, old friends, and familiar landmarks, you live and fend for yourself for perhaps the first time. Free of old ties, narratives, and expectations, you can become whatever you want to be. It’s an exciting moment of self-actualisation.
Yet sometimes, you can be railroaded into a first degree through sheer momentum. Having achieved your GCSEs, A Levels, and possibly a Foundation Degree, the obvious next step is an undergraduate degree. It’s something to do until you make you mind up about what you want to be in the world.
However, returning as a mature student, you are choosing to study, and, if you’re having to fund it yourself from your hard-earned pay, you fully appreciate the true value of it. Perhaps you’ve had to make a conscious decision and a considerable amount of effort to carve out this time for yourself.
It's precious time to focus on something you’re passionate about for once, beyond the duties and responsibilities of work and family. This is your time. To spend a whole year, or two if it’s part-time, focused upon your writing feels like a luxury and a privilege.
A quantum leap occurred when I undertook my master’s. I went from teaching evening classes and day schools, to securing my first permanent teaching contract as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, where I taught on creative writing courses for fifteen years.
My final major project was long-form fiction, which became my first published novel, The Long Woman. I won an Arts Council of England Award to fund a month-long book tour to promote the book, and suddenly I was elevated to being a professional writer. I founded a small press, and so I became a publisher too. I published the works of others for a decade, before I handed it over to friends to focus on my PhD.
During my time as its director, I created many author events, and so became the organiser of literary showcases – for which I did the co-ordinating, marketing, and hosting. I’ve run countless book launches, open mic nights, and showcases since then. As my literary profile developed, I found myself interviewed on local and national radio, as well as appearing on television.
As a creative writing teacher with substantial experience and a burgeoning publications list, I managed to get myself booked to teach for Skyros Writers’ Lab, both in Greece, where their creative/holistic retreats started, and in Thailand. I’ve also run my outdoors ‘Wild Writing’ sessions in North America, where I’ve been interviewed on podcasts.
I also approached a magazine to write a regular walking feature (‘Cotswold Ways’, a ‘writers in the landscape’ feature for the glossy monthly Cotswold Life). I was paid to research walks in areas associated with Cotswold-based writers.
To another, Derbyshire Life, I pitched a regular cycling feature, ‘Rural Rides’, which was commissioned – for that I researched cycle routes around the lovely Peak District.
I’ve also gone on to be the poetry editor for Caduceus magazine, and the ‘new nature writing’ editor for Panorama: the journal of travel, place, and nature, as well as a book reviewer for the British Science Fiction Association journal (BSFA Review). Alongside commissions, judging competitions, performing, recording podcasts, and running symposia, words have become my world.
Of course, other career pathways exist for our MA Creative Writing (Online) graduates: researcher, story consultant, copy-editor, indexer, proof-reader, literary agent, publisher, games writer, comics writer, dramaturge, screenwriter, speechwriter, ghost-writer, and many more.
Beyond these subject specialist careers, the transferrable skills you’ll acquire as one of our MA Online graduates – ideas generation, proposal-writing, project management, presentation skills, resilience, flexibility, self-discipline, teamworking, collaborative projects, group facilitation, running workshops, symposia, marketing, etc. – will greatly increase your employability.
Overall, I can say with hand on heart and twenty years’ hindsight (I graduated from my Master’s in 2004) that an online MA in Creative Writing will not only take your writing to a professional level but will change your life for the better!
Our online, part-time MA in Creative Writing will guide you in honing your creative identity. The skills you'll gain will offer you many options for your future. Find out more:
