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.”

(Yes, I know, this went live Thursday night—my mistake!)

• “17 Steps to Accelerate Your Writing Life”: tips from Bethany Jarmul posted over on the Brevity blog.
• Happening online next Monday: “Criticism in Isolation,” a craft panel from the National Book Critics Circle. “Criticism in Isolation looks at one book, reviewed from multiple angles, to put readers in the minds of critics and showcase the many different ways to write a review. In this discussion, critics discuss their approach to reviewing Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System.”
• In which Maya Popa shares Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread recipe.
• From Publishers Weekly‘s Emma Kantor: News for fans of Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, which will mark 80 years since publication in 2023. (I’m happy to see a paragraph in this article about the book’s dedication to Léon Werth–for more on that, you might revisit my own 2016 article.)
• And do check out the latest Jewish lit links: new Etgar Keret stories; Jewish joy; a #JewishBookMonth reading challege; more.

Have a wonderful weekend.