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.”

• This week brought news of “the appointment of Ada Limón as the nation’s 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2022-2023.”
• I haven’t read Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing, and I wasn’t planning to watch the movie; Jeffrey Goldberg’s report for The Atlantic certainly doesn’t make me want to change my mind.
• From Publishers Weekly: “Finding a Place for Disability in Publishing” by John Loeppky.
• Over on NiemanStoryboard, veteran author Lauren Kessler recalls the experience of publishing—and promoting—her first book (in the mid-1990s) and her latest one, which launched this spring. (Spoiler in the headline: “So you want to write a book? Brace yourself for some serious self-promotion and, yes, TikTok.”)
• And of course, you’ll find a fresh set of Jewish literary links posted over on the My Machberet blog.

Wishing everyone a good weekend.