The Creative and Professional Writing Programme at HKBU is the first UGC-funded undergraduate programme in Hong Kong tertiary institutions dedicated to creative and professional writing learning in both the Chinese and English languages. The Programme has developed from a very popular concentration of the Humanities Programme. Apart from cultivating students to write in the creative and professional fields, the Creative and Professional Writing Programme also aims to nurture students' academic potential, cultural dimensions and sense of creativity, and to enhance their professional value.

The Creative and Professional Writing Programme incorporate two distinct characteristics:

• Bilingual Teaching and Learning. Students will read, write and speak in Chinese as well as English, developing their skills in both languages. Bilingual ability enables students to respond to Hong Kong's specific linguistic environment.
• Interdisciplinary. All the Creative and Professional Writing courses are designed to ensure that students are exposed to the writing demands and strategies of diverse disciplines, including art criticism, language, literature, history, philosophy, media studies, business and science.

Aims of the Creative and Professional Writing Programme

• Provide students with a vigorous curriculum to develop creative and professional writing skills in Chinese and English languages
• Develop students' abilities when writing professionally in different genres and contexts to enhance students' career opportunities
• Cultivate students to produce original works of fiction, poetry, or nonfiction
• Enhance students' cultural literacy which would act as a solid basis for their creative and professional writing
• Build up their knowledge for self-directed and life-long learning in the world of professional writing and publishing

The Characteristics of the Curriculum

The 60 Major units of the Programme consist of 42 units of Required Courses and 18 units of courses from the two Major Electives of English and Chinese writing. The Required Courses provide fundamental learning in writing and concepts in aesthetics, theories and ideas in creativity, and cultural differences, in order to enhance students' intellectual cognition and skills.

Some of the Required Courses are:

• Writing Seminar: Workshop in Creative Writing
• Professional Writing Practicum: Essentials of the Craft of Writing
• Creativity: Theory and Practice
• Editing and Publishing
• Artistic Creativity and Aesthetics Awareness
• Writing Internship
• Writing for New Media
• Biography Writing
• Food, Wine and Travel Writing for the Leisure Industry

Career Prospects

Not everyone can become a great creative writer, but professional writing always includes a significant creative component. Our society urgently needs writers of all kinds. The professional writing portion of the curriculum, with good infusion of the creative side, can prepare students to work for a great variety of future careers. It goes without saying that graduates with excellent writing skills, both in English and Chinese, are of great demand. Our Programme not only caters to the needs of the market in news media, publishing houses, editorship of journals, government offices, non-profit and charity organizations, and the education sector, but also in the business, industrial and financial sectors. Employers are likely to choose someone who has graduated with creative mind, good language and writing skills, because the graduate with proficiency in languages will take years to cultivate, and creative mind is greatly in need.