JAMES MCDERMOTT
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Teaching Biography
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James has a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice from The University of East Anglia.

Since September 2022, James has been a part time Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia, teaching and co-convening BA and MA modules alongside Steve Waters, Ben Musgrave, Sian Evans and Timberlake Wertenbaker. 

Since September 2023, James has been a playwriting tutor for The National Theatre's New Views Programme, a nationwide playwriting competition for young people in which the winning plays get a rehearsed reading on the National's stages.

Since March 2022, James has been an Arvon Writing Tutor. In 2022, James co-tutored with Chris Thorpe and Tanika Gupta a week-long online writing course for Arvon called Playwriting: Asserting and Celebrating Diversity. In 2023, James co-tutored with novelist Eliza Clark a week-long Starting To Write residential retreat at Arvon's The Hurst in Shropshire. In 2024, James co-tutored with Hannah Khalil a week-long online Playwriting retreat. In 2025, James co-tutored with Tim Crouch and Winsome Pinnock a week-long online Writing For Performance retreat.

For Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, James co-delivers the ACE funded Tiny Plays Big Ideas in which he teaches primary school children across Bury St Edmunds how to write a short play. The strongest script submissions are then staged at Theatre Royal BSE. The project is now in its sixth successful year.

Between 2017-2021, James taught creative writing at Norwich Theatre Royal where he created and ran the courses Introduction To Scriptwriting, Advanced Playwriting and Writing For Performance. 

James has designed and delivered creative writing workshops and courses for many other organisations including Norwich University of The Arts, The University Of Suffolk, The University Of Essex, NEACO, Creative Arts East, Royal College Of Nursing, Queer Britain, Revoluton Arts, Norfolk Library Service, Norfolk Wild Life Trust, Out On The Page, Nottingham Writers Studio, London Queer Writers, New Wolsey Ipswich, Luton Hat Factory and Leicester Curve.​

James is currently writing a handbook on scriptwriting craft, how to start out as a writer and how to sustain a freelance writing career outside of the cities. The book was commissioned by Story Machine as part of their You Are A Writer series and is due to published by Story Machine in 2025, accompanied by a series of writing workshops. James has written features on writing your calling card script for The Writers & Artists Yearbooks 2022-2026.


To contact James about one-to-one writing mentoring or about running a writing workshop/course for your organisation, click here.

For news about James's forthcoming writing workshops, click here.

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  • ABOUT
  • SCRIPTWRITING
  • POETRY
  • LIVE
  • TEACHING
  • REVIEWS
  • GALLERY
  • Contact
  • SHOP
  • MEDIA
  • HEADSHOTS