Holly Psaliou

BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing

We caught up with former BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing student, Holly Psaliou, about her time at BCU and what she has been up to since graduating.

What is your current job role?

I work as an English Tutor at a college teaching GCSE English Language. I find the role hugely rewarding and it enables me to pass on what I know about creative writing to my students (as this is one element of the exam). 

What have you been up to since graduating?

Since graduating, I've kept on top of applying for as many writer opportunities, competitions and awards as I can and have continued to attend writer workshops. In 2021, my short radio play The Germinates was released; I was one of six writers whose pitch was selected to be developed to form an anthology podcast series – IGNITE for Fierce Green Productions. Each drama was written in response to the climate crisis, recorded at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with a cast of their members and supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The podcast was awarded bronze for Best New Podcast at the 2022 British Podcast Awards.

2022 saw the release of my short, animated film You're Still You that I wrote the screenplay for. The film is part of an anthology of eight shorts centred around the word 'Spectrum'. The films were a collaborative effort with the writers' group I am part of - Script Sirens: a West Midlands-based women and non-binary script writers' group. I was delighted that You're Still You was nominated for a Royal Television Society Midlands Award in the short film category. Also in 2022, I secured my first professional job on a short film where I worked as script supervisor

How would you describe the course?

There is a lot of reading, so don’t study the course if you don’t like reading. Take your time with it and don’t rush everything, start with enough time before assignment deadlines and have fun as well! The school of English is like a little community, the course tutors are really friendly and know their stuff. It is really hard to put in words when you really enjoy your course.

Do you have any advice for current students?

Advice I'd give to current English students is really immerse yourselves with your craft. When I first started university at BCU, my goal was to be a novelist, and that's all. That was before I knew how many different avenues I could pursue and that's led to my love of screenwriting and writing for radio as well as still having every intention to become a published novelist. It's incredibly important to be as versatile as you can be as a writer. And if you're interested in screen, script supervisor and script editor roles are highly valuable.