Pioneering Students Come to Leicester to Explore Technology Innovations for Creative Writing
1st November 2007
De Montfort University (DMU) is welcoming students from around the world as they come to Leicester this week for five days intense study on campus as part of a unique Masters degree in Creative Writing and New Media.
The course, which is mostly undertaken online, explores innovative technologies as a medium for creative writing and draws on the specialist areas of its staff at the forefront of research and practice in areas such as transliteracy, digital fiction, and creative non-fiction.
The Masters attracted global attention from the literary and media world in its first year when in February it partnered publishing giant Penguin Books UK to create the first ever wiki novel: a groundbreaking experiment in collaborative writing. Anyone, anywhere in the world was able to join in writing and editing the novel.
Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media at DMU who runs the MA, said: "Most of the students are already professional writers or just beginning their writing careers; but they all show an interest in learning about new media. They are interested in how new technologies can be harnessed to develop new kinds of writing as well as enhance their current professional writing."
The MA can be completed in either one or two years, and students on the course come from as far afield as Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Japan and Canada, and have a diverse range of literary backgrounds including a composer, several international journalists; members of the British Society of Authors and The Poetry Society Chris Meade, who is in the second year of studying the MA, and has recently left his post as the Executive Director of Booktrust to become the co-Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book.
Chris Meade said: "The course has been life changing for me; it turned me on to the creative potential of new media for literature. I realised I wanted to work with writers and readers at this moment of change for the world of words, so l was delighted to be asked to join the Institute for the Future of the Book, currently based in Brooklyn, New York, and keen to develop its work in the UK. "
Apart from this week when they join together on campus in Leicester city centre, the students will study the rest of the course from their homes and offices around the world, with a variety of technology including tutorials in Second Life. They will be trialling some experimental tools in creative writing and technology to aid their study.
More information about the eight new students on this year's MA can be found at: www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/cwnm/students_20078/
For further information or to be kept informed about IOCT activities, please contact:The Director, Institute of Creative Technologies,
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH
Tel: (+44) 0116 250 6146
Email: eedmonds [at] dmu.ac.uk
www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk