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Iowa Summer Writing Festival (ISWF)

Course

Jan. 18-Feb. 22, 2022. Start Your Memoir with Robert Anthony Siegel

Time limit: 100 days

Sorry! The enrollment period is currently closed. Please check back soon.

Full course description

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL 

 

Start Your Memoir with Robert Anthony Siegel (Six-Week Workshop) 

 

Dates/Time 

 

Tuesdays on Zoom, January 18–February 22, 2022 

6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m. Iowa/Central Time (7:00–9:00 Eastern; 4:00–6:00 Pacific; 5:00–7:00 Mountain) 

 

Fee: $625 

 

Course Description 

 

You have a memoir to write—a true story seized from the beautiful chaos of everyday life. The question you face now is how to uncover its shape and give it full-throated voice, the ability to sing. Do you just start at the beginning and write through to the end? What is the beginning, anyway? And once you’ve finally got moving, how do you keep going? 

 

This six-week fully online course is for beginning memoirists. It introduces students to the basics of memoir writing, including scene, structure, and narrative arc. We meet once a week for two hours via the videoconference platform Zoom—Tuesdays from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Classes combine lecture, discussion, and short exercises that we will write on the spot and share with the group, reading aloud. There will also be some very short take-home assignments, to keep you thinking between classes. And I will meet with each student for a half-hour Zoom meeting outside of class to discuss your memoir project in greater depth. 

 

What you will do over the six-week course:  

  • Attend six two-hour Zoom classes 

  • Meet with me for a thirty-minute conference 

  • Write short in-class and take-home exercises 

 

What you will learn: 

  • How to discover and explore your material 

  • How to do research 

  • How to articulate the conflict at the heart of your story 

  • How to envision your narrative arc 

  • How to explore your themes 

  • How to think about structure, create an outline, and compile a scene list 

  • How to write scenes 

  • How to create a writing schedule and set goals 

 

What you will take away: 

  • A short synopsis (including conflict, character, settings, and themes) 

  • An outline 

  • A scene list 

  • A writing schedule and set of goals 

 

Instructor 

 

Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of a memoir, Criminals, and two novels, All the Money in the World and All Will Be Revealed. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, The Paris Review, and other magazines. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan and a Mombukagakusho Fellow in Japan. Other awards include O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. Robert is an associate professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he teaches fiction and nonfiction. Visit his webpage at www.robertanthonysiegel.com. 

 

Registration & Fees 

The fee for this course is $625. Payment in full is required to register. 

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Registration for this class opens Monday, December 20, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. Iowa/Central Time.

Class size is limited to 10. 

 

Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center.” 

 

Refund & Cancellation Policy 

 

If you need to cancel your enrollment in a Festival class, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel two weeks prior to the start of class. After that, before the start date of class, we can offer a 50% refund. We cannot refund day-of cancellations, and we cannot refund or partially refund tuition once the class has begun. 

 

Terms & Community Policy 

 

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person. 

 

Questions? 

 

Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160. 

 

Our tiny staff is working remotely. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a message!