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.”

• Fifty (count ’em!) newly streaming recordings from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress.
• Lovely column by Jane Brody on the healing powers of poetry.
• Minnesota’s been on many people’s minds lately—and not for uplifting reasons. All the more reason to pay attention to something different: Laurie Hertzel’s “A New Exhibit Argues for the Timeliness of Famed Minnesota Author Sinclair Lewis.” (Confession: I’ve had a soft spot for Lewis since the time he was the focus of a high-school research paper.)
• A veritable mini-craft-lesson on the use of second person in (flash) fiction, courtesy of Kathy Fish.
• And there’s a nice new batch of Jewish Literary Links waiting for you over on the My Machberet blog.

Have a good weekend, everyone.