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.”

• My new hobby: the daily “Spelling Bee” puzzle from The New York Times. All my time with words notwithstanding, I have yet to reach “Queen Bee” status!
• From Fiction Writers Review: “Matthew Salesses and Ayşe Papatya Bucak talk craft, workshop, and his new book, Craft in the Real World, out now from Catapult.” (I’ve got a complimentary review copy of the book waiting on my Kindle; I hope to get to it sooner rather than later.)
• This simply made me happy: “Immediately following the stirring recitation by the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, at President Biden’s Inauguration on January 20, traffic to Poets.org spiked dramatically, with 250% more individuals coming to the site than on the same day last year. Poets.org, produced by the Academy of American Poets, is one of the most visited poetry sites online. This one-day increase, which represents approximately 200,000 more individuals coming to Poets.org, is the largest since the site launched twenty-five years ago.”
• “LeVar Burton, the actor and longtime host of Reading Rainbow, has been named the inaugural PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion, a new annual commendation that will ‘recognize devoted literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers,’ the PEN/Faulkner Foundation said in a release. Burton will be honored in a virtual celebration on May 10, when this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award winner—its 40th—will be announced.” More info via Publishers Weekly.
• And of course, you’ll find the latest Jewish-lit links posted over on my My Machberet blog.

Have a good weekend, everyone.