Finds for Writers
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.”
- Updated and expanded: Jane Friedman’s “How to Build an Author Website: Getting Started Guide.” (You can bet that I’ll be mentioning this guide to those who attend my upcoming book-publicity classes.)
- “Writers are told again and again that reading their work aloud is a powerful editing tool….But as much I understand the importance of reading aloud, I’m often loath to do it, especially for book-length manuscripts.” Still, Laura Maylene Walter recently pushed on through and read her entire novel manuscript aloud. Read all about that experience on the Kenyon Review blog.
- Craig Morgan Teicher’s latest poetry preview for NPR includes a number of oh-so-intriguing titles. (I’ll admit that Teicher’s description of John Murillo’s Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry reminded me in some ways of my own book, and I immediately added it to my tbr list.)
- Lots of intriguing backstory/process info appears in this “5 Things About Your Book” interview with Kent Garrett, co-author (with Jeanne Ellsworth) of The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever.
- And there’s a fresh batch of Jewish literary links up on the My Machberet blog. (Including, by the way, a rave review of the soon-to-air HBO miniseries adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.)
Have a good weekend, everyone.
