Erika Dreifus

Lots of nice things have happened this week. Thanks to Christi Craig’s lovely blog, I won a giveaway copy of Shann Ray’s American Masculine, which I’ve been meaning to read for months. I finalized and submitted a panel proposal for the 2013 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference. I spent an energizing 90 minutes with a fantastic group of college students who are taking a seminar on “Representing the Holocaust.” I finished preparing the May newsletter (it should go out Sunday or Monday after one last round of proofreading). And I discovered a new reader review of Quiet Americans on Amazon that frankly blew me away with its on-targetness (I think I just made up a word).

I was especially moved because this reader picked up on something I talked about at length during the classroom visit: the broad applicability of one of the notable German words in one of the stories: Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”). That we’ve just concluded the observance of Yom HaShoah makes the subject–and the review and the visit–even more meaningful.