An inspirational line-up of literary talent will be available to students at UEA with the announcement of new teaching staff yesterday. The creative writing course at the Norwich university, already established as a breeding ground for award-winning talent, unveiled five new teachers yesterday.

An inspirational line-up of literary talent will be available to students at UEA with the announcement of new teaching staff yesterday.

The creative writing course at the Norwich university, already established as a breeding ground for award-winning talent, unveiled five new teachers yesterday.

They included novelist and journalist Giles Foden, who won a Whitbread First Novel Award for the Last King of Scotland

in 1998.

The book was adapted for the big screen and saw Forest Whitaker win an Oscar for his portrayal of the central character, Idi Amin.

Mr Foden will be joined by poet and author Lavinia Greenlaw, biographer Kathryn Hughes, novelist and academic Rebecca Stott, poet and translator George Szirtes, and novelist, poet and critic Amit Chaudhuri.

The new additions to the course will be celebrated at an event at the Savile Club in London next Tuesday.

Prof Jon Cook, dean of UEA's faculty of arts and humanities, said: “Together, this new team of writers forms a remarkable creative community.

“The UEA has an unparalleled track record of success for work in this field, and this seems an appropriate moment to celebrate what has been achieved and inaugurate an exciting new phase in the history of creative writing at

the UEA.”

Course managers hope that the new teachers will nurture budding writers in the five strands of the course: prose, poetry, script-writing, life writing and literary translation.

Some of the country's most celebrated novelists have also been named as distinguished writing fellows for the course.

The likes of Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro - both graduates of the UEA course - will make regular visits to the campus to help students hone their creative skills. Other fellows include Graham Swift, Louis de Bernières, Rose Tremain and Richard Holmes.

The UEA creative writing course was founded by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson in 1970 to become the first MA course of its type at a British university.

It has generated a host of national award-winners, and this year two graduates of the course - Anne Enright and Ian McEwan - were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

The university hopes to further underline its creative credentials by posting video footage from its literary festival online via a series of podcasts.

Spanning the last 15 years, the recordings will include contributions from Harold Pinter, Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing, Alan Bennett, Martin Amis and Stephen Fry.