Daily schedule
Academic timetable
The academic timetables run from Monday to Friday each week.
For both levels, the programme provides a minimum of 46.5 contact hours, comprising:
- 24 hours of seminar meetings (12 hours per seminar)
- 22.5 hours of talks (15 sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours).
Each seminar has two 2-hour meetings per week, and classes typically contain no more than 15 students. All of the seminars involve writing exercises, group discussion, and the development of a portfolio of creative writing.
Students are also expected to complete private study during the course (eg reading, work in libraries, writing papers).
Meals
All meals included in the programme take place in Exeter College's dining hall and are self-service, with a range of options available. The only exceptions are the opening and closing dinners, which are formal served set menu meals.
Details of which meals are included in the residential and non-residential options can be found in the 'Accommodation' section, below.
Social programme
A range of optional social events* will be offered throughout the course. These usually take place in the evenings and weekends and are likely to include:
- walking tour of Oxford
- weekend excursions to sites of literary and/or historical interest.
You will also have an opportunity to share ideas and work with your fellow students at open mic nights and informal peer-led workshop sessions.
Beyond the summer school, Oxford is a vibrant city with a busy cultural and social scene offering a wide variety of plays, concerts, films and exhibitions.
*Please note: most of these activities incur additional costs.
Intermediate-level seminars
Students take two mandatory seminars as detailed below.
Creative Non-Fiction
Aimed at writers who would like to fine tune their non-fiction writing skills and bring a fresh energy to their narrative, this seminar will challenge you to think creatively and to be courageous as well as pin-point accurate and concise. Using examples of great writing and exploratory ways of using research, your tutor will help you to think boldly about how creative narrative can help to enliven your storytelling and produce compelling writing. There will be exercises, discussion and we will provide a safe space for experimentation.
Tutor: Julie Summers was educated at Bristol University and the Courtauld institute of Art (MA, Medieval History). She worked for 20 years in the art world and published her first full biography, Fearless on Everest, in 2000. The Colonel of Tamarkan: Philip Toosey and the Bridge on the River Kwai (2005) was followed by several books looking at life on the Home Front including Stranger in the House, When the Children Came Home, Our Uninvited Guests and Remembered: A History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Fashion on the Ration (2014), Dressed for War and British Vogue all consider history through fashion. Her most recent book, The Everest Mystery, will be published in June 2026.
Fiction
Explore who you are as a writer, reflecting on the stories that you see and hear in the stuff of everyday life and thinking about what you, uniquely, can bring to those stories that you choose to tell.
We will discover how to depict fictional worlds, characters, relationships, situations and sequences of events so that they seem ‘real’ but at the same time sing on the page and make for compelling reading. To this end, we will be spending our time on writing exercises and discussion – sharing our work, ideas and experiences as and when we are comfortable to do so.
Tutor: TBC
Advanced-level seminar options
Advanced-level applicants choose two seminars from the list below. Please check the seminar timetable (available from January 2026) when choosing your options to ensure they do not clash.
Creative Non-Fiction
Aimed at experienced writers who would like to fine tune their non-fiction writing skills and bring a fresh energy to their narrative, this seminar will challenge you to think creatively and to be courageous as well as pin-point accurate and concise elements of the story. Using examples of great writing and innovative ways of using research, your tutor will help you to think about how creative narrative can help to enliven your storytelling and produce compelling writing. There will be exercises, discussion and we will provide a safe space for experimentation.
Tutor: Julie Summers was educated at Bristol University and the Courtauld institute of Art (MA, Medieval History). She worked for 20 years in the art world and published her first full biography, Fearless on Everest, in 2000. The Colonel of Tamarkan: Philip Toosey and the Bridge on the River Kwai (2005) was followed by several books looking at life on the Home Front including Stranger in the House, When the Children Came Home, Our Uninvited Guests and Remembered: A History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Fashion on the Ration (2014), Dressed for War and British Vogue all consider history through fashion. Her most recent book, The Everest Mystery, will be published in June 2026.
Fiction: Turning Ideas Into Narratives
For those who have started to write prose but do not yet feel fully confident. Using a variety of exercises and some examples from literature, we shall investigate the formation of character, and develop character arcs. Then we shall develop story and plot outlines together, planning scenes. Finally, we shall attempt to identify and discuss your unique strengths and preferences with a view to finding your USP – unique selling point.
Tutor: Dr Rachel Bentham has been Royal Literary Fellow at Bath University, and teaches for both Bristol and Bath Spa Universities. Her plays and short stories have been regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and her poetry is internationally published. She has recently completed a novel set in nineteenth-century Tahiti. A recent collection of haiku was called Let All Tongues Flower (2013); her most recent collection, also of haiku, is titled Other Roads North (2019) and reached number one on Amazon.
Fiction: Fine-Tuning Your Writing
Designed to help you hone your craft as a writer and see your project through to its completion.
We shall start by examining your aims and motivation, troubleshooting any problems you are having in maintaining commitment and progress. We shall explore how to give your writing maximum resonance and power, analysing how you can use voice and point of view, give your characters extra depth and weave together story strands, themes and images. Finally, we shall look at sending your work out into the world, with workshopping and advice on editing and pitching.
Tutor: Lorna Fergusson is a writing coach, editor and speaker, author of The Chase and An Oxford Vengeance. She runs Fictionfire Literary Consultancy and has taught on various Oxford University writing programmes since 2002. Her stories have won an Ian St James Award, the Historical Novel Society’s Short Story Award, and been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and Pan Macmillan’s Write Now prize. In 2021 and 2022 she was runner-up for the Mogford Prize. She is developing one of the Mogford stories as a novel, as well as working on poetry and a book on mindset for writers. Her latest book is One Morning in Provence, a collection of stories set in France.
Middle-Grade and Teen/Young Adult Fiction
The middle grade and teen/young adult fiction markets are exciting, and rewarding, areas of publishing. This seminar, run by an established novelist, will look at the way successful writers have chosen subjects and themes, explored fantasy and/or social realism, and found exactly the right voice to appeal to younger readers. It will also explore such key topics as planning, plot development and perspective. Students will be guided in the development of a story of their own, and there will be plenty of opportunities to workshop ideas and get feedback on stories as they progress. Please note: New adult fiction is not included in the content of this seminar.
Tutor: Julie Hearn is the critically acclaimed author of a number of novels for young adults, all published by Oxford University Press. Included are: Follow Me Down, shortlisted for the Branford Boase First Novel Award, The Merrybegot, shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Highland Children’s Book Award, and Rowan the Strange, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and described by The Guardian as 'nothing short of extraordinary'. Her eighth novel, I am NOT adorable, written for younger children, was published by Jolly Heron in 2018 and a collection of short stories, The Princess Thing, was published in 2024.
Poetry
Poetry may well be 'a pheasant disappearing in the brush', as Wallace Stevens quipped, but on this seminar we will carefully and cunningly follow that pheasant into the underwood. In this series of workshops, we will go in deep and examine new and old examples of poetry, to figure out how it can be made. You can write poetry in so many ways these days, and you will experiment with traditional and avant-garde methods of writing poems, learning not only how to write different kinds of metrical lines but also accomplished free verse, among other things. Ben Jonson knew that 'a good poet's made, as well as born', and on this seminar you will be made into one through continual practice, innovative imitation, and workshop discussion.
Tutor: Dr Edward Clarke teaches English literature and art history at Oxford University. He is the author of two books of criticism, The Later Affluence of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens and The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry, and he has edited a selection of poems by Henry Vaughan and George Herbert, Divine Themes and Celestial Praise. His collection of poems, A Book of Psalms, was published 2020. ‘Clarke’s Psalter’, the documentary he presented about writing these poems, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His latest collection of poems is called Cherubims. A selection of his poems, The Voice inside Our Home, was recently published.
Scriptwriting
This seminar is based on the study and creation of scripts for stage, screen and radio and on helping aspiring dramatists to develop a practice to engage with a golden age of script writing. Convincing characters in coherent plots, with a keen awareness of genre, is the basis of all good fiction. We shall explore such core elements, culminating in the submission of a short script. In the third week, you can workshop a script that begun outside the course. Dramaturgy will be strictly focused to help writers to develop individual writing for performance projects, using processes that are ‘industry standard’.
Tutor: Shaun McCarthy has had over a dozen stage plays professionally produced and a range of radio dramas broadcast. His adaptations include J M Synge’s The Aran Islands (BBC R4 Classic Serial), a stage version of A Christmas Carol that was a critique of David Cameron’s ‘big society’ and had a happy, unexpected ending; and a re-set of Strindberg’s Miss Julie to Oxford 1963. He teaches a range of creative writing courses for the Department, runs Hooligan Theatre Productions to develop his new plays and co-runs the writing events and residential writers’ retreats company ‘Stage and Page' in the UK and Italy.
The Short Story
Encouraging you to become a braver, more vital writer by experimenting with the short story form.
As close to poetry as it is to prose, the short story is ideal for testing uncommon characters and situations, innovative structures and syntax. Unlock voices and creative techniques that will transform your writing practise. In the final week we will focus on intensive self-editing and how to transform a saggy, weak story into a powerful, shapely narrative, through close examination of language, rhythm, energy and pace. Perfecting short fiction is a great way to build your track record through publication in literary journals and entry to awards judged by agents and publishers.
Tutor: Susannah Rickards' collection of short fiction, Hot Kitchen Snow, drawn from experiences of growing up in North East England and working in East Africa, won the international Scott Prize in for best debut fiction collection in 2010, and is published by Salt. Her writing regularly appears in journals and anthologies and has been broadcast on BBC radio. She read English at Oxford University and now lives in Surrey, where she writes and mentors new and established authors.
