Following storm of tweets over creative writing programme's dismissive description, English faculty backs down
Kent University's School of English has performed a screeching handbrake turn and professed itself "penitent" after Twitter erupted over a description of their creative writing programme which implied that children's fiction was a lower form of writing than adult fiction.
The Kent University website suggested that teachers at the Centre for Creative Writing "love great literature and don't see any reason why our students should not aspire to produce it … We love writing that is full of ideas, but that is also playful, funny and affecting. You won't write mass-market thrillers or children's fiction on our programmes."
This was enough for the children's writer SF Said to publicly challenge the department, tweeting: "@UniKentWriting You say here "great literature" is one thing; children's books etc another. Can you see the problem?"
The Centre for Creative Writing replied to the author of the award-winning children's book Varjak Pa at the end of last week, joking, "Sorry for the slow response. We were writing adult novels." Adding that unlike many creative writing courses that "claim to teach a bit of everything", the department doesn't teach YA or children's books, just "literary novels".
After a storm of criticism from children's writers, the department's attitude began to shift, tweeting: "We are penitent! The offending passage will be removed. As soon as we can work out how to do it," and promising "the author of the offending passage will be paraded through Canterbury in chains, pelted with copies of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games".
The climbdown received a cool reception from Said, who offered thanks for acknowledging the problem, as well as a little advice: "treating children's books like a joke again may not be the answer!" For the double Carnegie Medal-winner Patrick Ness (@Patrick_Ness) Kent's school of creative writing was still "Not quite getting the point". "My fav contemporary writers are also Mitchell, Smith, Barker. Guess what I write?" he added.
Kent's backdown continued apace this morning. It tweeted apologies: " …The text has been changed, humble pie eaten." The offending passage was still available on sections of the website at time of writing, but the department's "gracious" apology was enough for Said: "Thank you for taking children's literature seriously."
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