ABOUT US
The Creative Writing Programme is the leading independent centre for creative writing teaching in the south-east of England. From 2002 until 2012, it was part of the University of Sussex where its founder Dr Mark Slater ran a highly-successful course. Following the introduction of university fees, together with Mark’s belief that to teach creative writing effectively you need a more holistic and less theoretical approach, the course became independent.
Now more than 150 writers take one and two-year courses in creative writing, life writing and poetry both online and in person in Brighton, Worthing, Eastbourne and Tunbridge Wells. These are complemented by one-day masterclasses (available to anyone) and our Advanced Writers Workshops. The teaching focuses on the writer's creativity, the actual creative process of narrative construction and on the embodied experience of reading.
The course is now run by Cathy Hayward who completed the creative writing programme in 2017 and has since signed a three-book publishing deal. Cathy also runs Kemptown Bookshop where many of the face-to-face courses and student readings are held.
Cathy Hayward
Cathy is director of the Creative Writing Programme. She trained as a journalist and edited a variety of trade publications, several of which were so niche they were featured on Have I Got News for You. She then moved into the world of marketing and set up an award-winning PR agency. In 2022, after having spent a lifetime pottering around bookshops, she bought Kemptown Bookshop in Brighton and is working to create a community hub which supports local authors and aspiring writers. Devastated and inspired in equal measure by the death of her parents in quick succession in 2016, Cathy completed the Creative Writing Programme out of which emerged her debut novel The Girl in the Maze (Agora, 2021) about the experience of mothering and being mothered. It won Agora Books’ Lost the Plot Work in Progress Prize 2020 and was longlisted for the Grindstone Literary Prize 2020 and Flash500 2020. It was bought by Lake Union and reissued as The Girl in the Midnight Maze in November 2024. Her second novel will be published in November 2025 and she’s currently working on her third novel which is due out in March 2026.
Sophie Anderson
Sophie is a tutor on the Creative Writing Programme. She had careers in TV production and online marketing, but neither scratched that creative itch to tell a story. So after the birth of her fourth child she enrolled on the Creative Writing Programme where she wrote her debut novel, The Butterfly Garden. It was published in 2020 and her second novel The Sapphire Cove came out the following year. Sophie writes about family and secrets, motherhood and loss. Her third book is out on submission and a departure from the first two contemporary novels, it is based on the experiences of her grandmother at the Women’s Internment Camp in the Isle of Man during the WW2. She recently completed a PGCert in Teaching Creative Writing at University of Cambridge and is working on her fourth novel.
Graham Bartlett
After thirty years of policing, whereby Graham Bartlett became Brighton and Hove police’s chief superintendent, a senior homicide detective and a public order and firearms commander, he is now a best-selling crime fiction and non-fiction author, and police and crime advisor. His debut non-fiction, Death Comes Knocking, written with Peter James, was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller, and Peter and Graham followed this up with the critically acclaimed Babes in the Wood. Since then, Graham has had three solo crime novels published; Bad for Good (Sunday Times Top Ten Best Seller, Winner of Crime Fiction Lover Editors’ Choice Award 2022 and Nominated for Specsavers Debut of the Year 2022), Force of Hate, and City on Fire. As a police procedure and crime advisor, Graham works with over 200 authors and TV writers (including Peter James, Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, Ruth Ware, Mark Billingham and the BBC), helping them inject authenticity into their work. He runs live and online crime writing courses, is a regular speaker at crime writing festivals and appears in many true crime TV documentaries.
Rosie Chard
Rosie is a novelist, freelance editor, writing coach/mentor, landscape architect and English language teacher. After qualifying as a landscape architect from the University of Greenwich she lived and worked in Denmark and Canada for several years, designing gardens, parks and urban spaces. Her first novel Seal Intestine Raincoat, published in 2009 by NeWest Press, won the 2010 Alberta Trade Fiction Book Award and received an honourable mention for the Sunburst Fiction Award the same year. She was also shortlisted for the 2010 John Hirsch award for the Most Promising Manitoba writer. Her second novel The Insistent Garden, also published by NeWest Press, was the recipient of the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction in Manitoba in 2014. The Eavesdroppers, her third novel, was published by NeWest Press in September 2018. She is currently writing her fifth novel. Rosie also teaches introductory classes to creative writing and runs workshops on Dialogue and Plotting a Novel at City Lit Adult Education College in Holborn, London.
Elaine Chiew
Elaine is a novelist, short story writer, freelance editor, writing mentor, and English teacher. She is the author of The Light Between Us (Neem Tree Press, 2024), her debut novel longlisted for the inaugural Cheshire Novel Prize, and The Heartsick Diaspora (Myriad Editions, 2020), a short story collection recommended in The Guardian, Esquire SG, The Singapore Straits Times, BookRiot, with a special mention in The Saboteur Awards. She is also the editor/compiler of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015), and Guest Editor of Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press, 2022). A two-time winner of the Bridport International Short Story Prize, her stories have been anthologised in the UK, U.S. and Asia, including in The Best Asian Short Stories (2021) and three of them broadcasted on BBC Radio 4.
She has an M.A. in Asian Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has worked as an independent visual arts researcher in Singapore. In a former career, she was a U.S. trained corporate attorney with a degree from Stanford University, and worked in New York, London and Hong Kong.
Ruth Figgest
Ruth is a novelist and short story writer. She was born in Oxford and grew up in the US. Her short stories have been short listed and commended for the Bridport Prize several times and in 2013 her short story “The Coffin Gate” was broadcast on Radio 4. Magnetism, her debut novel was published by Myriad in 2018. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development from the University of Sussex.
Charlie Hill
Charlie is the author of several genre-defying works including a novella described by Nicholas Royle as ‘an engrossing piece that…were the author French and his readers all French, might well have been regarded as a worthy late edition to the school of existentialist literature’ and a memoir about which The Quietus said: ‘unique, beguiling… If it has literary precursors, they are Georges Perec’s or Joe Brainard’s minimal I Remember.’ His second collection of short stories was shortlisted for the 2024 Edge Hill Prize.
Tammye Huf
Tammye is a novelist and short story writer. Her historical fiction debut, A More Perfect Union, won the Diverse Book Award 2021 and was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2021. It was also selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club as well as for several prominent best books lists. Her short stories have been published in various magazines, including Diverse Voices Quarterly, the Penman Review, and the London Magazine where her story was runner-up for the 2018 Short Story Prize. Her second novel will be published in February 2026 by Transworld (UK) and Blackstone (US).
Mick Jackson
Mick’s first novel, The Underground Man, was shortlisted for The Booker Prize. He has since published a further three novels and three collections of stories, all with Faber and Faber. He is a visiting lecturer at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.
Katy Massey
Katy Massey writes fiction and scripts, as well as non-fiction and worked as a journalist for many years before completing her PhD on memoir and autobiography at Newcastle University. Katy’s memoir Are We Home Yet? about her relationship with her mother was published in 2020 by Jacaranda and was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Her novel All Us Sinners was published in March 2024.
Alongside her own work, she has guided and published numerous emerging writers and initiated her own Arts Council-funded literature projects. She has published two anthologies of memoir: Tangled Roots: True Life Stories About Mixed Race Britain, featuring 30-plus contributions, and Who Are We Now? a collection of first-person experiences of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Dr John McCullough
John’s collection of poems Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His most recent collection Panic Response was published in 2022 and was a Book of the Year in The Telegraph as well as featuring in The Times‘ list of Notable New Poetry Books for the year. Its long poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He has been teaching creative writing and literature in higher education since 2002 and lives in Hove.
Roy McFarlane
Roy is a poet, writer and former youth and community worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage, spending most of his years living in Wolverhampton and the Black Country and now living in Brighton. He is currently the National Canal Laureate. He’s the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and Starbucks Poet in Residence and co-editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack). His three collections are published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath and The Healing Next Time (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize) and his third collection Living by Troubled Waters is out now. Roy has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a Doctor of Letters by the University of Wolverhampton. He continues to perform nationally and internationally sharing his passion for social justice, equality, identity love and the healing power of poetry as a witness to our times.
Dr Beth Miller
Beth is the author of six novels, including the bestselling The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright (2020). Her most recent novel, The Woman Who Came Back to Life (2022), will be published in seven languages. Her seventh novel will be published in summer 2025. She has also published two non-fiction books about Shakespeare and the Archers. She is a subject tutor on the Creative Writing MA and MFA at West Dean College, and a regular tutor for Arvon. She works as a writing mentor and book coach for writers at all stages. She has a PhD in Psychology.
Read Beth’s top writing tips.
Jacq Molloy
Jacq is an award-winning short story writer, performed playwright and freelanced for many years as an arts writer for magazines/newspapers. Her short stories have won/placed in competitions such as Mslexia Magazine short story competition, The Brighton Prize, Frome short story competition and been published in anthologies. She has been a creative writing tutor for 18 years and also coaches writers. Jacq has a Master’s in Creative Writing from Sussex University and is a Certified Writing Coach through NAWE, (National Association of Writers in Education).
Read our short interview with Jacq and her top writing tips.
Vayu Naidu
Vayu did her doctoral research on oral traditions and performance storytelling. Her fiction combines myths and epics and contemporary situations in a tapestry that unveils the human condition, our strength through our vulnerability. She is Professor of Practice at SOAS, Lecturer in Indian Theatre at RADA, and an RLF Fellow. She volunteers at Chelsea Physic Garden.
Bethan Roberts
Bethan has published five novels and writes drama for BBC Radio 4. Publications include The Good Plain Cook (Serpent’s Tail, 2008), which was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. In 2012 Chatto and Windus published My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover. The book has been made into a major motion picture starring Harry Styles and Rupert Everett. Mother Island (Chatto, 2014), received a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize while her latest novel, Graceland (Chatto, 2019), tells the story of Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys.
Her work for Radio 4 includes a series of seven short stories about dancing, Strictly Stories, a two-part adaptation of the Russian novel Bride and Groom. She has written several Afternoon Dramas, including My Own Private Gondolier and When Ali Came to Abingdon. She also writes short fiction, for which she has won the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Prize and the RA Pin Drop Award. Bethan has taught Creative Writing for Chichester University, Goldsmiths College, West Dean College, the Open University, and Mslexia magazine.
Sharlene Teo
Sharlene is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Surrey. Her debut novel Ponti was published by Picador and Simon and Schuster in 2018. It won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award, was shortlisted for the Hearst Big Book Award and Edward Stanford Award, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.
Her work has been translated into eleven languages and appeared in publications such as The Guardian, McSweeney’s, the TLS, LitHub, Granta and Vogue. She completed an MA in Prose Fiction and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia where she received the Booker Prize Foundation scholarship and the David TK Wong Creative Writing Fellowship. She holds fellowships from the University of Iowa International Writing Program, the Sozopol Fiction Fellowship and the Vil·la Joana Residency.
Henry Tydeman
Henry is a writer and English teacher from Brighton. His short fiction has been published in The Manchester Review, the Bournemouth Writing Prize Anthology and Academy of the Heart and Mind. His work has been shortlisted in the Wild Hunt Magazine competition and the Wells Festival Poetry Prize. He has written about politics and the arts for Huffington Post, Reaction and The Drift. He is also a songwriter, and his group, Barbara, have toured with Paul Weller, The Divine Comedy and Haircut One Hundred.
Hannah Vincent
Hannah is a novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her first novel, Alarm Girl was published in 2014 by Myriad Editions and her second, The Weaning was published in 2018 by Salt. Her short story collection She-Clown and Other Stories, published by Myriad in 2020, was shortlisted for the Edgehill Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. Her stage plays have been produced by among others, The Royal Court Theatre and The Royal National Theatre Studio and her radio play Come to Grief won a 2015 BBC Audio award. She has a PhD in creative and critical writing from the University of Sussex.
Read Hannah’s top writing tips.
Listen to Hannah’s short story, which was recently broadcast on Radio 4.
Laura Wilkinson
Laura has published seven novels for adults (two under a pseudonym) and numerous short stories. These novels are That Night in New York, which came out in September 2024 published by Serendipity, the new romance imprint at Legend Times, Crossing the Line, The Family Line, Redemption Song and Skin Deep. Crossing the Line was a Welsh Books Council book of the month and Skin Deep was longlisted for Not the Booker prize. Alongside writing, she runs workshops on craft and has spoken at literary events nationwide. For more than twelve years, she’s worked as a creative writing tutor for organisations including New Writing South and on the MA programme at West Dean. She is also a structural editor and mentor, coaching writers to competition short listings and publication.
