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.”
- “Meet Amanda Gorman’s California successor as youth poet laureate: Alexandra Huynh.” (Danielle Broadway for Los Angeles Times)
- “Novelist, short-story and non-fiction author Joy Williams, known for works such as ‘State of Grace’ and ‘The Quick and the Dead,’ is the winner of the 2021 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Librarian Carla Hayden announced today.” (Library of Congress)
- “I was 60 years old when word arrived from my agent that she had sold it in a two-book deal. I was ecstatic, of course, but also feeling like I was late to the world’s best party and all the fun and shenanigans had gone on before I arrived.” From Shawn Nocher’s “Late to the Party: On Being a ‘Mature’ Debut Author” (Writer’s Digest).
- ICYMI: Especially if you’re planning on working on submissions this weekend, you’ll want to take a look at the opportunities listed in the brand-new issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0.
- And there’s a lot of rich new material within the latest Jewish lit links post on the My Machberet blog (including a spotlight on a current writing contest).
Have a good weekend, everyone (and good holiday-weekend wishes to my fellow Americans).
