Voice: A Multigenre Weekend Intensive. Robert Anthony Siegel, Instructor

Registration opens on Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

 

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

 

Spring 2025

 

Voice: A Multigenre Weekend Intensive (Weekend Workshop)

 

Robert Anthony Siegel, Instructor

 

Dates/Time

 

Friday, March 28–Sunday, March 30, 2025

 

Introductory Meeting and Overview, Friday on Zoom:

 

• 7:00–8:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 8:00–9:00 pm Eastern Time
• 5:00–6:00 pm Pacific Time
• 6:00–7:00 pm Mountain Time
  
  

Workshop Meetings, Saturday & Sunday on Zoom:

 

• 11:00 am–4:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 12:00–5:00 pm Eastern Time
• 9:00 am–2:00 pm Pacific Time
• 10:00 am–3:00 am Mountain Time

 

Saturday and Sunday meetings include a one-hour break. Class meets for four hours each day.

 

Fee: $350

 

 

Course Description

 

Why is it that some narrators feel real to us—as if they were sitting across the table, telling us their story? And why do we feel so utterly compelled to listen to them?  

 

The sense of a narrator’s deeply individual presence starts with what we like to call voice, the linguistic expression of character. But how does voice work? And how do we make it happen on the page? 

 

This weekend online intensive is designed to explore that question for prose writers at all levels of experience. We will look at a series of examples of voice from great works of fiction and nonfiction, consider what makes them effective, and then explore these techniques through short in-class writing exercises, putting what we’ve learned to work right away. We will share these exercises with each other, getting feedback in real time. 

 

This course is for writers working in fiction and nonfiction, at any level of experience. Just come ready to talk, ask questions, write short in-class exercises, and share with the group. 

 

Takeaways: 

• A clear understanding of voice, its components, its role in creative writing, and how it is created on the page. 

• Techniques and exercises to help you develop voice in your own writing. 

 

Class Overview: 

 

Day 1:  

• What is voice? How does it work? What does it do?  

• The first-person narrator. 

 

Day 2:  

• The authorial narrator. 

• What is “the writer’s voice”? Developing your own voice as a writer. 

 

 

Instructor

 

Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of a memoir, Criminals, and two novels, All Will Be Revealed and All the Money in the World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Paris Review, The Drift, The Oxford American, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in Best American Essays 2023, O. Henry Stories 2014, and Pushcart Prize XXXVI. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, a Mombukagakusho Fellow in Japan, a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a Paul Engle Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA from Harvard. Find more at www.robertanthonysiegel.com. 

 

 

Registration & Fees

 

The fee for this course is $350. Payment in full is required to register.

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

Class size is limited to 12.

 

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, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel one week 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 registration fees once the class has begun.

 

Terms & Community Policy

 

1.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.

 

2.  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 small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!