Andrew Cowan

Andrew Cowan is a graduate of UEA with a BA in English and American Studies and an MA in Creative Writing. Before joining the faculty in 2004 he was twice a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at UEA, working with students on their expository and creative writing skills. He was a longstanding tutor in Creative Writing for the Arvon Foundation and is the author of six novels, which have been published in 12 languages, including PIG, which won a Betty Trask Award, the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for five other awards. COMMON GROUND and CRUSTACEANS both received competitive Arts Council bursaries. WHAT I KNOW was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers' Award and was published in 2005. His Creative Writing guidebook, THE ART OF WRITING FICTION, was published by Pearson Longman in 2011 and his fifth novel WORTHLESS MEN in 2013. His most recent novel YOUR FAULT was published in 2019.  His monograph AGAINST CREATIVE WRITING was published by Routledge in 2022. His Instagram can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/andrewcowan01. His website can be found at: www.andrew-cowan.com

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• 2022-2023: Course Director for MA in Creative Writing (prose)
• 2016-2019: Course Director for MFA in Creative Writing
• 2016-2018: School Promotions Committee
• 2012-2013: School Research Committee
• 2012-2013: School Enterprise Officer
• 2011-2018: Director of Creative Writing
• 2011-2012: Project Manager www.newwriting.net
• 2009-2013: School Promotions Committee
• 2009-2012: Deputy Head of School
• 2007-present: Admissions Tutor, MA in Creative Writing (prose)
• 2007-2011: Course Director for MA in Creative Writing (prose)
• 2007-2012: Member of MA Exam Board
• 2007-2009: School Teaching Committee
• 2004-2007: Course Director for BA Hons in English Literature with Creative Writing
• 2004-2007: Member of BA Exam Board

Andrew Cowan is a Professor of Creative Writing and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. For 10 years until 2018 he was the Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA. He is a graduate of the UEA MA and was for some years UEA’s Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow. He is the author of six novels: PIG, which won several literary prizes including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, COMMON GROUND, CRUSTACEANS, WHAT I KNOW, which received an Arts Council Writers' Award, WORTHLESS MEN, and YOUR FAULT, which will be published by Salt in 2019. His Creative Writing guidebook THE ART OF WRITING FICTION was published in 2011, and he is currently writing a monograph for Routledge, AGAINST CREATIVE WRITING.  He teaches on the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, including the MA in Prose Fiction, the MFA in Creative Writing, and the PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. In 2010 he was a keynote speaker at the 'Writing Across Cultures' conference at City University of Hong Kong and the annual conference of the Australian Association of Writing Programs in Melbourne. In 2011 he wrote UEA’s successful bid for a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education. He also wrote the bid for which the UEA Creative Writing website – www.newwriting.net - received AHRC funding. In 2012 he was an invited speaker at the AWP annual conference in Chicago, at the University of Fudan in Shanghai, China, and the Festival of International Literature in Bucharest, Romania. In 2013 he was the keynote speaker at the Storyville Festival at Kyoto University of Art and Design and the 1^st International Conference, Creative Writing, University of Western Macedonia, Greece, and was a participant at the Sozopol Fiction Seminar in Bulgaria and the International Festival of Literature and Translation (FILIT) in Iasi, Romania. In 2015 he was a visiting professor at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece, and in 2016 he chaired the Creative Writing program review at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and was the external adviser to the BA English with Creative Writing course approval process at Queen Mary, University of London. In 2017 he was a keynote speaker at the 3rd International Conference, Creative Writing, Ionian University, Greece.

My sixth novel, YOUR FAULT, will be publishd by Salt in 2019 and I am currently writing a monograph for Routledge, AGAINST CREATIVE WRITING, for publication in 2020.  In 2011 I published a Creative Writing guidebook, THE ART OF WRITING FICTION, for which I've been commissioned by Routledge to write a revised edition for publication in 2021.

I am principally a novelist with an interest in issues in Creative Writing pedagogy.

I supervise Creative and Critical writing research students, principally though not exclusively the creative component of their PhDs.

I supervise Creative and Critical writing research students, principally though not exclusively the creative component of their PhDs.