Year 1: Getting started or re-started as a creative writer; working at writing and writers at work; writers as readers: readers as writers; modern and post-modern fiction; contemporary drama and dramatization; students also complete a project. Year 2: The practice of poetry: appropriate form and function; writing fiction: techniques, genres and processes; fantasy and alternative realisms: critical analysis and theory from Shelley to Carter; post-colonial literature; and modern Irish literature; students also carry out an independent study. Year 3: Writing poetry: the practice of art, politics and language in contemporary contexts; writing fiction: voices, themes and readership; life writing; literature pre-1780: narratives of nation-history and discourse; modern and post-modern world literature; students also complete a dissertation.