Three weeks after securing the country's most prestigious literary award for her novel Wolf Hall, she is to be found queuing for a cup of tea in the cafeteria at Sheffield Hallam University, where she has been a visiting professor for three years.

Not just a personal coup, Mantel's new Booker status is an endorsement of the nurturing of creative writing at Sheffield Hallam, which has established itself as a world leader in the field, sending out from its
MA course graduates who go on to experience for themselves literary recognition and success.

Most famous of its recent alumni is Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, shortlisted for the Orange Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker. Other graduates include poet Anne Stewart, who won last year's Bridport Prize, and novelists Liz Kettle, Lily Dunn and Bill Hussey, while novelists Jill Dawson and Kathryn Heyman were students back in the
mid-90s.

As visiting professor, Mantel comes to Sheffield Hallam twice a year to give master classes and teach workshops of six students, reading their work in advance and analysing it with them, in a remarkably hands-on fashion, to help solve writing problems and encourage a fresh perspective.

"There's something very satisfying about working on the craft element of fiction, rather than discussing it in general terms," Mantel says. "Helping people craft dialogue and so on.

"Experience is what you bring to it. I have just published my twelfth book and, in my writing, I've encountered most of the problems.
Also, there's the general business of confidence, and I think I can be a good example in that way. I'm not someone who started off with contacts in writing and I didn't have a literary background. I think I am able to say that if I could do it, you can."

Many of the permanent teaching staff are working, experienced and successful novelists, poets and screenwriters. Novelists Lesley Glaister and Jane Rogers are both staff lecturers, as is screenwriter John Milne, who writes for Waking the Dead and The Bill.

Last year, Sheffield Hallam cemented its literary reputation by launching a BA degree which, with about 48 students this year, is already the largest undergraduate Creative Writing degree in the UK.

Meanwhile, the MA course continues to flourish, despite academic misgivings when it was set up in the early 1990s. Back then, there were only three other similar courses in the UK, including the one founded by Malcolm Bradbury in 1970 at the University of East Anglia.

"It was established at a time when any kind of degree course in Creative Writing would have been viewed with a degree of suspicion," says Conor O'Callaghan, poet and senior lecturer. "I don't think that suspicion holds any more."

"No," agrees Dr Mary Peace, MA writing course leader, "but that's one of the reasons why somewhere like Hallam was able to create a course like this, because there was more flexibility than there would have been at some of the old institutions."

Unlike other Creative Writing courses, students at Sheffield Hallam cover a broad range of writing genres, taking in script writing and children's writing. And it's all about getting published.

"This is the one course in the country that requires students to complete a book to graduate," says Conor O'Callaghan. "We require the students to write somewhere between 80,000-100,000 words. We're aiming towards actual publication in the real world."

Not all successful MA applicants have to have a first degree, but they do have to be able to demonstrate talent and commitment to writing. It's competitive – each year there are two intakes, each with about 10 students, at the end of September and at the beginning of January, and 50-60 applicants for each set."Most of our students are between 30 and 70," Dr Peace says. "It's something that they have always dreamed of doing. We have had city analysts and neuro-surgeons, so it operates at quite a high level."

Students apply from all over the country, and the world (there are US students on the course, and an exchange programme with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh).

Teaching takes place on a Wednesday afternoon, with time for students to catch a train back to London.

Many study part-time, while working, and can take up to six years to complete it (and their piece of work), should they need to.

Some external examiners are literary agents, although it's impossible to say how many graduates will see their work published. "The chance of them graduating with something publishable, however, is very, very high," O'Callaghan says.

Witnessing the success of graduates such as Marina Lewycka, who had two unpublished novels and 36 rejection slips in her portfolio when she began the MA, speaks volumes. "It gives the current students of the course great hope," says Dr Peace.

"The students get excited about meeting people who are so successful and it's a great pleasure for them to have somebody like Hilary read
their work."

A pleasure, a privilege and an invaluable opportunity for new writers to learn, first-hand, from a reigning Booker Prize winner prepared to give so generously of her thoughts, wisdom, experience and insight.

"There was a very simple piece of advice given to me by my agent when I first knew him," Mantel says. "When a writer begins, they often have ideas about tailoring to a market and wondering what style to adopt. But he said, 'Always write as well as you can. Don't think, I must go downmarket to suit a particular reader. Be as intelligent and as stylish as you can, and you will find your readers'.

"I have found that to be a really valuable piece of advice and something that I have done ever since."


Mastering the writer's craft

MA Creative Writing student Don Hedley, 55, from Sheffield, has a degree in English from Leeds University and is a market analyst.

"I've written a number of unsuccessful novels, so I came on the MA course to get to the next stage of actually getting published," he says.

His last novel was read by Harper Collins, but turned down. "They said, 'This is a slickly written thriller that talks the talk, but doesn't quite walk the walk.' I felt I needed some more
craft education."

Don was one of the six students selected for the workshop with Hilary Mantel, who read a chapter and synopsis of his novel Wildwood and gave him detailed feedback.

"She said it was a very tightly written thriller chapter that she'd read and she said she actually thought that I'd get it published," said Don. "My next stage will be to approach agents with it, when I've made a few adjustments."

"What you get out of the course is an actual education in the techniques of writing, which you don't get when you do a degree in English – you don't learn about the nuts and bolts of characterisation and plot and how to create an atmosphere and a setting, and what you really, really don't learn is how to be a page turner.

"I've made some really good friends on the course, because we are all people who are trying to do the same thing and it's fun, and we are all stimulated. Everybody pretty much has another job, a day job. I tend to work very early in the morning so I don't cut across the family and irritate my wife too much."

"To get two hours with a Booker Prize winner is an amazing thing. As well as obviously being a fantastic novelist, she is an amazing teacher."