Erika Dreifus

Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.

On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”

The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

• “Books are the best. There should always be more books. You just aren’t going to get rich from them.” That’s the concluding takeaway from agent Kate McKean’s excellent breakdown of book deals.
• Noted this week via the New York Public Library’s Twitter timeline: “Where to Start with Zora Neale Hurston.”
• In the latest installment of her “Writers in the Trenches” series, Faye Rapoport DesPres pays tribute to and interviews Michael Steinberg, whose latest book is an essay collection titled Elegy for Ebbets: Baseball on and off the Diamond.
• From the Poetry Foundation: a collection of poems for the newly-arrived fall season.
• And you’ll find the final set of Jewish-lit links for the year 5779 over on the My Machberet blog.

Have a great weekend—and please note that there will be no Monday Markets and Jobs post on September 30, as I will be observing the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). However, I do anticipate sending out the October edition of The Practicing Writer newsletter ahead of time (most likely on Sunday morning), so that can keep you busy for a while.