Classes
Click on the course title to register (except for the Online Multigenre Workshop and the NYCWriting Intensive. For those, you’ll need to email me directly to enroll.)
September 15 (Tuesday, 7-9 PM Eastern)
Find Your Fiction Voice: A Two-Hour Craft Talk
Writers talk a lot about voice, but what is it, exactly? Why is it so important? How does it work? And how is it constructed? We’ll look at several examples of voice from great published stories, and then explore how to create a range of distinctive voices in our own writing through in-class exercises.
September 29—October 27 (Tuesdays, 9-11 PM Eastern, 5 Weeks)
Read Like a Writer and Write Like a Reader
Close analytic reading is one of the best ways to improve your fiction. It sharpens your eye for the hidden moves beneath the surface of a story, giving you tools to apply to your own pages. Each week we'll discuss a single story in depth, followed by a brief craft talk highlighting elements of its construction. We’ll end with a generative writing exercise tied to the reading, which students may share. The five selected stories will vary in subject, theme, and style and together offer a crash course in core elements of fiction: scene, exposition, subtext, conflict, resolution, and narrative change. Students will gain insight into story structure and generate pieces that can stand alone or grow into future stories. Readings will include “Simple Recipes” by Madeleine Thien, “The Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain” by Yoko Ogawa, and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez.
Students who have previously taken CW 86: "Reading Like a Writer and Writing Like a Reader" are welcome to join as the structure is the same, but the readings and exercises are new.
September 30 (Wednesday, 7-9 PM Eastern)
The Ethics of Memoir: A Two-Hour Craft Talk
Every memoirist knows that honesty is the great force that powers memoir. But what if that honesty causes distress to family and friends? What does the writer owe to others who appear in their story? And what does the writer owe to the story itself?
Though at first glance the ethics of memoir can feel fraught, even intimidating, the truth is that thinking about the people in your story is always a positive step, a way of adding richness and complexity to your understanding of your memoir. Ultimately, this seminar will help you write the story you need to write with greater confidence and freedom.
October 19 (Monday, 7-9 PM Eastern)
Mastering Sense of Place: a Multigenre Craft Seminar on Setting
Through a mixture of lecture, discussion and creative exercises, this multigenre craft talk will show you how to create effective setting. We will start by reading outstanding examples of place description from a variety of great writers, analyzing the way they use setting to deepen character and story, regardless of whether the genre is fiction or nonfiction. Afterwards, we will do a series of exercises designed to help you explore and develop your own use of setting.
Saturday, November 7 (Saturday, 12-4 PM Eastern)
The Flexible Lens: Using Third-Person Point of View: A Four-Hour Fiction Intensive
Third-person point of view is the most common way to tell a story, and yet it may be the most varied and complex as well. In the hands of some writers, it goes deep into character consciousness; in the hands of others, it avoids thoughts and feelings altogether and sticks to surfaces, actions, and events. In some stories it stays with a single viewpoint character; in others it travels freely, moving from character to character.
This 4-hour weekend intensive offers a focused overview of the subject, using published stories as examples. Together we'll examine how the various modes of third-person actually function — the distant "journalistic" register, the close and interior, the slippery overlap of free indirect discourse, and the roving narration that shifts between viewpoint characters. After each story, you'll put the craft into practice with generative writing exercises that can be shared with the group.
January 8-10 (Friday-Sunday)
NYCWriting Intensive Goes to LA: A Weekend Workshop in Santa Monica, California, co-taught with Karen E. Bender
Join us January 8-10 in Santa Monica, California, for a jam-packed in-person weekend discussing your work in progress, generating new material, talking with publishing professionals, and connecting with other writers in one of the greatest literary cities in the world.
This weekend workshop is multigenre, open to fiction writers, essayists, and memoirists. Karen and I will be team teaching, so you will get written feedback from both of us. Writers will also receive a thirty-minute Zoom conference with Robert or Karen the week after the conference to dig deeper into workshop feedback and help formulate a revision strategy. Cost: $850.
Email me at ranthonysiegel@gmail.com to register or ask questions.
May 23–28, 2027
Writing Workshops Iceland 2027 is led by National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender in fiction, Best American Essays contributor Robert Anthony Siegel in nonfiction, and New Yorker fiction contributor Ramona Ausubel, whose Master Class & Generative Seminar is open to writers of every genre who want to make new work on the ground. Mornings are for workshop, craft seminars, and one-on-one conferences. Afternoons are for Þingvellir, Öxarárfoss, the Blue Lagoon, and the northern light that in late May doesn't quit until nearly midnight.
Each cohort is capped at 10 writers. Fiction and nonfiction participants submit two pieces before we arrive: one for group critique, one for a private conference with your instructor. Ramona's cohort comes empty-handed and leaves with pages.