Programme Leader
MA Creative Writing
School of Creative Industries
17 August 2016
LASALLE's MA Creative Writing is Southeast Asia's first taught Master's in Creative Writing, located within a vibrant and interdisciplinary community of multicultural writers, teachers, mentors and supervisors drawn from across the creative industries.
We caught up with Canadian writer and Programme Leader of MA Creative Writing, Dr Darryl Whetter who writes—and teaches creative writing—primarily for the wisdom, community and empathy of great writing. Read on to find out more about his passion for creative writing and the programme!
Why is the MA in Creative Writing Programme at LASALLE unique?
We teach writing as an art alongside other arts. Literary language is language at its most fluid and beautiful. Here, our writers will study alongside painters, filmmakers, designers, dancers, photographers and actors. English-language creative writing programmes are one of the rare growth areas in the Arts and Humanities, yet elsewhere writing students and faculty are isolated from other artist-researchers on campus. Study Creative Writing elsewhere, you’re more likely to work alongside a Dickens scholar or a historian than an actor or sculptor. Study Creative Writing at LASALLE, you’re one of many artists and art professionals.
What made you decide to be an educator in creative writing; and why Singapore?
I teach writing because I love writing. Most of my soul is made of books. To be able to accelerate someone else’s journey into that kind of heightened self-awareness and communicative power is, quite simply, beautiful. Not all Programme graduates will live as writers, but they will all deepen their abilities to think, feel and communicate. Although I’ve done all that in Canada, I came to Singapore primarily to build this Programme from the ground up, work at a school where the arts are everything (not a frill) and extend the multiculturalism of my teaching, scholarship and bilingualism. In any creative project there’s a quickening after exploration and research, a solidification. My hunch is that the arts and cultural industries in Singapore are about to quicken and solidify, to explode like the technology sector.
Who is it for? Who should consider this programme?
We welcome prospective students who love language, story and voice. Writing educations thrive on the workshop model, where students receive instruction from professors and visiting artists but also, crucially, peer critique. That workshop model welcomes a variety of writers, from recent post-grads to those with other careers, to retirees, to working writers in the country and region who want to deepen their craft and expand their career opportunities. Crucially, our students learn alongside other students and Faculty in sibling MA programmes like Arts Pedagogy and Practice, Art Therapy, and Arts and Cultural Management. Very quickly, our graduates will be the writing teachers, publishers and literary festival directors of tomorrow.
What’s been the biggest challenge for you in writing?
Working so long and hard on multi-year projects which provide little reward or external encouragement. I write in all genres, but the novel is my passion. Writing a novel takes years. When you do it outside a writing programme, you’re out in the cold alone for so long.
Any advice for those who are considering to pursue a career in the creative writing sectors?
Take our Programme! People who haven’t studied Creative Writing may have a false impression that writing can’t be taught. This is not true! Almost anything can be taught, writing included. I promise that a dedicated student will be a better writer by the close of a course or programme.
Read more about Darryl here.
