Applications for this residency have now closed. Please see our current opportunities here.

Are you an early career writer looking for a creative writing course? Are you passionate about collaborating creatively with others?

NCW seeks aspiring writers and translators from the UK and Myanmar who would like to learn more about the art and craft of writing a short story, develop their skills and share their work each other.

About the course

The online creative writing course runs from February to May 2023. Each module will teach an aspect of the craft of writing, with writing prompts as exercises. You will work through each module at your own pace and will meet once a fortnight with your creative writing tutor and the other participants for a discussion via Zoom.

The course is designed for creative writers and literary translators working alongside each other: the aim is to encourage writers to write their own short stories and give translators an insight into story writing techniques that will be useful for them when they translate short stories.

Each of the writers will produce a piece of writing, which the translators will translate, with support from the tutors. The writing will be published in an online zine, in both languages, to showcase new writing talent and provide give insights into the lives of people in Myanmar and the UK.

This project is supported by the British Council Connections Through Culture Programme.

How to apply

We are looking to recruit 24 participants, over the age of 18, but with no upper age limit.

• Six creative writers in Myanmar
• Six creative writers in the UK
• Six Burmese-English translators
• Six English-Burmese translators

There will be two groups, one English-language (with translations into Burmese) and one Burmese-language (with translations into English). In your application, please indicate which group you would prefer to join.

To apply, please fill in the application form here.

The deadline for applications is Monday 9 January 2023.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

The tutors

Ko Ko Thett, creative writing tutor for the English-language group

Ko Ko Thett is a bilingual poet with several collections of poetry and poetry translations, in Burmese and English, under his belt. He has been featured at a number of literary events, from Sharjah to Shanghai, and his poems and translations have appeared in literary journals worldwide, from Griffith Review to Granta, translated into several languages and are widely anthologized. His most recent poetry collection is Bamboophobia (Zephyr Press, 2022).

Dr Zaw Tun, Burmese-English translation tutor

Dr. Zaw Tun is an Emeritus Professor and Head of Department. He has translated over 60 poetry books, biographies and novels from Myanmar into English (1992-2021); and from English into Myanmar he has translated T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and Raymond Chapman’s An Introduction to Literary Stylistics; Global Guardian Poems (2018).

San Tun, creative writing tutor for the Burmese-language group

San Tun (pen name San Tun Thaung) is a retired Professor of Philosophy, Dagon University, Yangon, Myanmar. He has published his collected poems with his illustrations and hand writings, research papers in various journals, five books on Philosophical Essays in Myanmar, a book on Philosophical Poems in Myanmar, and a book in English on Myanmar Philosophical Thought.

Thett Su San, English-Burmese translation tutor

Thett Su San is a Burmese literary translator with a speciality in contemporary women’s fiction. In 2020 she became the very first Prospect Burma scholar to have graduated with an MA in Literary Translation at University of East Anglia (UEA), UK.