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.”
Yes, these are atypical times. But I’m trying to keep this (largely) a typical Friday post.
- Useful tips for anyone pitching blogs (aimed to freelancers, but I’d say they’re applicable for book-promo purposes, too).
- Yes, at this point, it seems as though anything AWP-related is probably a million years old—but sometime after I posted last week’s finds I caught Alison Stine’s compelling piece on “The Problem of Money and Access at AWP,” and it seemed worth sharing.
- ICYMI: I posted the text of my remarks from last week’s NeMLA panel on “Narrative Poetry: Contemporary Poets Summoning Stories” right here on Practicing Writing. (Scroll down to “Midweek Note” #2.)
- As a number of my own events have been canceled, and I’ve watched lots of acquaintances announce that they’ll be teaching via distance-learning for the remainder of the semester, it has occurred to me to offer the possibility of virtual “author visits” to relevant “classrooms.” Check this post (with some bonus info re: online teaching subsequently threaded) for more info.
- And you’ll find a new batch of Jewish-lit links posted on the My Machberet blog.
Have a good, safe, healthy weekend, everyone.
