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.”

• Karen Lynne Traub’s mentor said that what Traub had submitted “might be shaped into a fine personal essay but it is not a critical thesis for an MFA program.” Here’s what happened next.
• Looking forward to reading Adam Morgan’s “10 Best Book Reviews of 2019.”
• It’s always nice to see the latest “New and Noteworthy” titles on the New Pages Book Stand; for reasons that will become clear, it’s especially nice for me to see this month’s batch.
• Library Journal spotlights 2019’s “paradigm-shifting public libraries [that] are designed around their communities’ changing needs.” Are any of them in your neighborhood?
• And last, but by no means least: check out the latest Jewish-lit links over on the My Machberet blog.

Have a great weekend, everyone.