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.”

• ICYMI: The November issue of The Practicing Writer went out to subscribers yesterday. (Yes, another two dozen fee-free, paying opportunities await you and your fiction, poetry, and/or cnf.) This issue will remain online until the December edition replaces it.
• “Can Bookshop Become the Indie Amazon?” I suspect that mine isn’t the only inquiring mind that wants to know.
• Succinct, sage advice on book promotion from Saraceia J. Fennell.
• On my weekend reading list: two articles tagged “The Politics of Fiction” on New York magazine’s “Vulture” vertical. One is by Alexander Chee; the other, by Lila Shapiro, is titled “Who Gave You the Right to Tell that Story” and features “ten authors on the most divisive question in fiction, and the times they wrote outside their own identities.”
• And if it’s Friday, there’s a fresh batch of Jewish-lit links over on the My Machberet blog (including a quick reminder about the EXCITING week tk!).

Have a great weekend!