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.”
- A thread from Tommy Dean begins: “After reading over lots of 100 word stories in the last 48 hours, here are some thoughts on how they work.”
- It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned one of my favorite weekly newsletters: Adam O’Fallon Price’s The William Trevor Reader (Price is going through Trevor’s Complete Stories with a close reading of one story each week). This week’s astute commentary, focusing on the story “Office Romances,” begins: “For this week’s installment, I want to talk about alcohol—its role in Trevor’s fiction and fiction in general.” As always, worth reading.
- In which Erin Somers poses questions about letters of recommendation and literary institutions and programs. (You may want to check out who has responded—and who has not.)
- As I’ve mentioned, I’m taking part in Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer project, which I notice has received a shoutout in The Writer‘s new piece on “15 Summer Writing Prompts for Your Personal, Professional, and Creative Writing Practices.” I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be using one or more of the prompts for at least one of my remaining 1000-word sessions.
- And as per usual, you’ll find another set of Jewish-lit links posted over on the My Machberet blog.
Have a great weekend.
