Classes
April 30-May 21 (Wednesday Evenings)
Online Multigenre Workshop
Email me at ranthonysiegel@gmail.com to learn more or register: This fully online four-week multigenre workshop is capped at 8 members to allow in-depth discussion. Each writer workshops one piece of up to 30 pages and meets with me in conference to discuss a second piece. Discussion will be focused on the issues that matter most to narrative writers, whether they are working in fiction or memoir: character, conflict, plot, scene, and voice. The class will read and offer feedback with an eye toward what is working, what is missing, and what the writer can build on.
June 3-July 1 (Wednesday Evenings)
The Storytelling Lab: Read & Analyze 5 Great Stories in 5 Weeks
In this fully online Zoom class, we will hone our critical reading habits together, looking at five short stories in five weeks, one per week. Each class will begin with discussion, then move on to a brief craft talk highlighting the story’s construction. We will end with an in-class writing exercise that we can share with the group—and store away in our notebooks as the seed of a new story. The writers we’ll be reading in this installment: Murakami Haruki, Grace Paley, Willa Cather, Lauren Groff, and Mavis Gallant.
July 12 (Saturday)
Writing Flash Nonfiction: A One-Day Zoom Intensive
We all know flash fiction, the super-short story form that leans on voice and image to capture a moment of imaginitive inspiration. But what about flash’s nonfiction counterpart, sometimes called the micro-essay or the micro-memoir? Just a page or two in length, flash nonfiction is perfect for the memoirist looking to capture a telling moment of lived experience, or the essayist bent on making a point in the most concentrated form possible.
This one-day online intensive course is designed for writers who want to start exploring the creative possibilities of flash nonfiction. We will talk about how the genre works, read a variety of published examples displaying different approaches to form, and generate work of our own through in-class exercises, sharing our writing with the group as time permits.
July 19-20 (Weekend)
In person on campus at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City: This weekend intensive course is designed for writers who want to explore the creative possibilities of flash fiction. We will talk about the origins of flash and how it works, read a variety of published examples, and generate work of our own through in-class and take-home exercises. By the end of the weekend, you will take away at least six new works of flash fiction and a list of ideas for ten others.
July 21-25 (Monday-Friday)
In person on campus at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City: This weeklong intensive course is designed for writers beginning a novel. Through a combination of lecture, discussion, and in-class creative exercises, we will explore the desires that drive your most important characters to act; understand how the conflict that starts with your protagonist creates your plot; experience how scene works as a dramatic unit, and how it combines with exposition to cover large spans of time; make decisions about which parts of your story to tell in scene; and explore the idea of character arc, in which characters struggle and change in response to events.
August 30 (Saturday)
Writing Flash Fiction: A One-Day Online Zoom Intensive
Just a page or two in length, flash fiction is quick and easy to learn, yet endlessly rich and challenging to practice. This one-day online intensive is designed for writers who want to explore the creative possibilities of flash fiction. We will talk about how it works, read a variety of published examples, and generate work of our own through in-class exercises, sharing our writing with the group as time permits.